Amazon and Anthropic revised parts of their contract terms early this year, changing the billing method for Anthropic's AI models from a computation time basis to a token usage basis starting next year, according to a report by The Information on the 29th citing multiple sources. A token is a unit for AI computation; in English, one word is generally about 1.3 tokens. This billing overhaul may raise Amazon's AI service operating expense, as Amazon loads Anthropic's AI models into products like "Alexa for Shopping," "Q," and "Quicksight." Some in the industry interpret the change as a chance for Amazon to reduce reliance on Anthropic, as Amazon has rapidly expanded ties with OpenAI this year, including committing a $50 billion investment in OpenAI's funding round in February and deciding to sell OpenAI's GPT models on AWS. Recent U.S. government export control guidance barring foreign access to Anthropic's top-tier AI models "Mythos 5" and "Fable 5" was prompted by an Amazon report flagging security risks. Amazon is also reportedly reviewing building a lightweight model based on the Claude model using a "distillation" method. An Amazon Spokesperson said, "Amazon and Anthropic share a multifaceted partnership... the claim that changes... will increase expense is not true." Anthropic said, "The unit cost of performing important tasks using Claude is decreasing with each generation."