AWS unveils ‘Amazon Q’ enterprise-grade AI assistant

AWS has unveiled the launch of ‘Amazon Q’, a generative AI-powered chat assistant designed specifically for enterprises. 

Chief executive Adam Selipsky announced the launch of the AI assistant during his open keynote at AWS re:Invent, the cloud giant’s annual flagship conference in Las Vegas.

Amazon Q will provide users with detailed business insights based on natural language prompts, and is capable of providing tailored content generation based on specific business needs.

This includes the ability to make changes to source code to streamline application development, Selipsky told delegates at the conference, as well as the ability to automatically generate document summaries.

“Amazon Q brings a set of capabilities to support developers and IT professionals,” the cloud giant said in an announcement online. “Now you can use Amazon Q to get started building applications on AWS, research best practices, resolve errors, and get assistance in coding new features for your applications.”

As part of the announcement, Selipsky fired a broadside at industry competitors Microsoft and OpenAI, noting that AI chat assistants have typically been viewed with concern by enterprises due to the risk of data leakage and privacy-related issues.

“These days it seems like just about everyone is experimenting with them [AI chatbots],” Selipsky said. “What the early providers in the space have done is genuinely exciting for consumers, but in a lot of ways these applications don’t actually work, at work.”

“While their general knowledge and their capabilities are great. They don’t know your company, they don’t know your data, they don’t know your operations and this limits how useful their suggestions can be.

“They also don’t know much about who you are at work. They don’t know your role, your preferences, the information you use, or what you do and don’t have access to.”

Selipsky said that, critically, other providers such as OpenAI have launched tools “without data privacy and security capabilities that virtually every enterprise wants”.

His comments follow highly publicized ChatGPT-related data leaks earlier this year, which prompted a host of organizations - including Microsoft itself - to prohibit the use of the chatbot in business environments.

Amazon Q: What can users expect?

Amazon Q has been described by AWS as a dedicated “business expert” designed to support workers in roles spanning multiple business functions.

The tool will provide users with immediate, relevant information and advice to help “streamline tasks, accelerate decision-making and problem solving, and help spark creativity and innovation at work”, the company said in an announcement post.

The generative AI assistant draws on internal company data to provide detailed insights into specific business processes, such as IT operations, software development, or business intelligence.

Critically, the tool works by “understanding your systems, your data repositories, your operations,” Selipsky said.

Amazon Q is being framed by AWS as a cross-functional tool that can be augmented and tailored to individual needs, and a direct competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT platform.

The launch of the assistant marks another major foray into the AI-powered assistant space for AWS after the launch of Amazon CodeWhisperer, its own equivalent of GitHub’s copilot service.

Amazon Q has officially launched in preview for AWS customers, with pricing starting at $20 per month, per user. A separate tier specifically for developers will be available for $25 per user, per month.