Amazon has announced plans for a new research facility in Germany that will focus on developing AI to improve customer experience in visual systems. The company has said that research at the hub will also benefit those who use Amazon Web services as well as it’s AI assistant tech Alexa.
The center will be based in Tübingen near the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, drawing on the expertise of Prof. Bernhard Schoelkopf and Prof. Michael J. Black. Schoelkopf is co-inventor of technology that enables computers to understand causality and Black is a specialist in computer vision and the founder of Body Labs – a company that has worked on the development of AI to analyze 3D human body motion and shape.
This will be the fourth of Amazon’s centers in Germany after Berlin, Dresden and Aachen and in Tübingen more than 100 jobs for machine learning engineers will be created over the next five years
Amazon joins companies BMW, Bosch, Daimler, Facebook and Porsche in backing a German initiative launched last year that will focus on areas such as robotics, machine learning and computer vision.
Amazon said it would also contribute 1.25 million euros ($1.5 million) to Germany’s Cyber Valley collaborative research effort and a further 420,000 euros ($500,000) to fund individual research awards.
