Amazon Q: New generative AI-powered assistant for work

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced a new generative artificial intelligence (AI) chat tool named Amazon Q for businesses.

The major announcement at AWS re:Invent – the annual event for the Amazon subsidiary’s cloud computing services –  is a clear response to competitors already in the chatbot space. Amazon Q is an AI-powered assistant designed specifically for work. Imagine ChatGPT if it had access to your company’s files and could use its data. The assistant aims to provide fast, tailored answers to queries, assist in content generation, and facilitate actions based on a company’s data and expertise.

Unveiled in the keynote address by AWS CEO Adam Selipsky during the Las Vegas conference on Tuesday (Nov, 28), Amazon Q will give staff the ability to ask questions related to work tasks. Such as ‘what are the most recent performance results?’, ‘what are the company guidelines around marketing content?’, or request insights into company data.  Instead of employees manually searching through numerous documents, Q will quickly retrieve the information needed.

AI chatbots exploded into the public consciousness in November 2022 when ChatGPT went live. The large language model (LLM) chatbot from OpenAI has sparked a surge in AI product development and a highly competitive market as new and established technology companies battle to make inroads into the nascent sector. Amazon will join other Big Tech players like Microsoft and Google in the space.

What can Amazon Q do?

Q will “empower employees to get answers to questions”, Amazon said in a statement.

Using 17 years of AWS knowledge and data as training, Amazon Q will let developers and  IT workers build, deploy, and operate applications on AWS. This means (in theory) it can do a lot of the heavy lifting on coding projects and allow for much of the workflow to be automated.

The chatbot can be integrated to generate a web application that employees can access through existing authentication systems, ensuring personalized and secure interactions. From there, using business data Q will in theory be able to answer a huge range of questions related to the business.

There’s a personalization aspect too. Interactions are based on users’ roles, identities, and permissions within the organization. Users can access Amazon Q through the AWS Management Console, company documentation pages, developer environments like Slack, and other third-party applications.

Pricing for Amazon Q in Connect starts at $40 per month. The technology is available for preview now and users can try Amazon Q in Connect “for no charge until March 1, 2024.”

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