Amazon launches Q, an AI chatbot for businesses; here’s what it can do

The tech giant Amazon said on Tuesday (November 28) that it was launching Q — a business chatbot powered by generative artificial intelligence.

The announcement, made in Las Vegas at an annual conference the company hosts for its AWS cloud computing service, represents Amazon's response to rivals who have rolled out chatbots that have captured the public's attention.

What does Amazon Q do?

Amazon Web Services said Amazon Q is a new type of generative artificial intelligence-powered assistant that is specifically for work and can be tailored to a customer’s business. The company said the chatbot empowers employees to get answers to questions, solve problems, generate content, and take actions using the data and expertise found at their company.

AWS said Q provides information and advice to employees to streamline tasks, accelerate decision making and problem solving, and help spark creativity and innovation at work.

The technology is currently available for preview.

Why the name Q?

The name Q is a play on the word “question”, given the chatbot’s conversational nature, said Adam Selipsky, the chief executive of Amazon Web Services. He added that it is also a play on the character Q in the James Bond novels who makes stealthy, helpful tools, and on a powerful Star Trek figure.

What is Q’s USP?

Amazon is highlighting security and privacy as the unique selling proposition of its business chatbot Q. Selipsky shared that many companies had told him that they had banned AI assistants from their enterprises because of security and privacy concerns. He said companies wanted to use chatbots in their workplaces, but they wanted to be sure that the huge amounts of corporate data would remain safe and private.

How much does it cost?

A preview version of Amazon Q is available now. After the end of the preview period, Q for business users will cost $20 per person per month. A different version with additional features for IT workers and developers will cost $25 per person per month.

The models from Microsoft and Google for business workers cost $30 per person per month – Copilot for Microsoft 365 and Duet AI for Google Workspace.

The generative AI scene so far

San Francisco startup OpenAI's release of ChatGPT a year ago sparked a surge of public and business interest in generative AI tools that can spit out emails, marketing pitches, essays, and other passages of text that resemble the work of humans.

That attention initially gave an advantage to OpenAI's chief partner and financial backer, Microsoft, which has rights to the underlying technology behind ChatGPT and has used it to build its own generative AI tools known as Copilot. But it also spurred competitors like Google to launch their own versions.

These chatbots are a new generation of AI systems that can converse, generate readable text on demand, and even produce novel images and videos based on what they've learned from a vast database of digital books, online writings, and other media.

Transparency index of AI models

While Amazon is ahead of rivals Microsoft and Google as the dominant cloud computing provider, it's not perceived as the leader in the AI research that's led to advancements in generative AI.

A recent Stanford University index that measured the transparency of the top 10 foundational AI models, including Amazon's Titan, ranked Amazon at the bottom. Stanford researchers said less transparency can make it harder for customers who want to use the technology to know if they can safely rely on it, among other problems.

Amazon to invest $4 billion in AI start-up

The company, meanwhile, has been forging forward. In September, Amazon said it would invest up to USD 4 billion in the AI start-up Anthropic, a San Francisco-based company that was founded by former staffers from OpenAI.

The tech giant has also been rolling out new services, including an update for its popular assistant Alexa so that users can have more human-like conversations and AI-generated summaries of product reviews for consumers.