Titan, Amazon’s suite of foundation models has got another addition. The Titan image generator. This week, at the re:Invent conference in Las Vegas, Swami Sivasubramaniam, VP of Analytics and Machine learning announced Titan Image Generator. He said that the tool is now available in preview. He went on to say, “You can customize these images using your own data to create content that better reflects your industry or your brand.” 

Amazon has entered the market for text-to-image models along with Adobe Firefly. While it’s early to judge, Titan’s competitors have faced challenges. For instance, Google’s Imagen admitted to encoding biases, sometimes resulting in racist or toxic outputs. Similar issues have been observed with DALL.E, Stable Diffusion, and others. 

The model is said to have been trained on ‘diverse datasets’ though Subramaniam declined to elaborate on the specifics of the data source. “We’re carefully choosing how we train our models and the data we use to do so,” Sivasubramanian said during the announcement.

Better late than never

AWS is the largest provider of rented computing power and data storage. But it has trailed OpenAI and Microsoft Bing Image Creator (which incidentally uses Dall-E) in bringing to market products based on its own text to image models. Amazon’s Titan line has added new models since a bare-bones launch in April, including some designed to generate text more cheaply than OpenAI’s latest versions. While big tech companies are cautious to release their image models like Imagen and CM3leon to the public, Midjourney, RunwayML, Stable Diffusion have a thriving user base for the same.

The main reason most of them are reluctant to release them is because of safety and the risk of spitting out harmful, biased and stereotypical images.  Josh Woodward, VP of Google Labs, explained, “The whole point of AI Test Kitchen is to a) get feedback from the public on these AI systems and b) find out more about how people will break them.”

Runway ML, Midjourney, Stability AI and Stable Diffusion have retained the right to ban users creating harmful images and the platform does not process obscene prompts. Meanwhile Amazon has done the same and has built-in guardrails against bias. The feature is said to deny topics that are unsafe and check the user inputs and outputs. 

In contrast Amazon refuses to release the datasets the model is trained on, and just trust that it has built in mitigations against toxicity. Swami Sivasubramaniam said at the re:Invent that,“ Titan image generator is trained on a diverse set of datasets to enable you to create more accurate outputs.”

To combat intellectual property theft and to distinguish between AI generated images to an authentic one, Amazon has added invisible watermarks to their output. Besides just creating a new image, Titan Image Generator allows users to isolate, extract, or integrate new components and edit images. Most useful applications are swapping backdrop settings or incorporating items into lifestyle photographs.

Amazon is also hedging its bets, trying to entice other large model makers to offer their software to AWS customers. Their primary model taps the B2B market unlike the already existing platforms. “Generative AI is poised to be the most transformational technology of our time, and we are inspired by how customers are applying it to new opportunities and tackling business challenges,” Sivasubramanian said in the company’s release. 

Amazon has also highlighted the model’s adaptability for various sectors, such as e-commerce, advertising, and entertainment. For instance, companies can tailor the model with their proprietary imagery to maintain a uniform visual style.

Earlier this year, Amazon agreed to invest as much as $4 billion in AI startup Anthropic. As part of the deal, AWS clients have access to Anthropic’s Claude models, including one released last week, Sivasubramanian said. He also said Amazon offers an updated version of Meta Platforms Inc.’s Llama model. “As customers incorporate generative AI into their businesses, they turn to Amazon Bedrock for its choice of leading models, customisation features, agent capabilities, and enterprise-grade security and privacy in a fully managed experience.”