AWS introduces the Amazon Q assistant

Background

Amazon Q was introduced at AWS re:Invent, the company's annual conference. It was designed for work and connects to a company's own data.^[1]

What happened

On 28 November 2023, at re:Invent, AWS introduced Amazon Q, a generative AI assistant designed for work, in preview.^[1] The preview was available in two US regions: US East (N. Virginia) and US West (Oregon).^[1]

Key details

Amazon Q connects to company data through more than 40 connectors. It can act through plugins for Jira, Salesforce, ServiceNow and Zendesk.^[1] Answers respect users' existing permissions and cite their sources, so a user can see where an answer came from.^[1]

Administrators can restrict topics and limit answers to trusted company information.^[1] The assistant can use an existing Amazon Kendra retriever, which is the search component that finds documents for the assistant to draw on, and it integrates with SAML 2.0 identity providers, the standard used for single sign-on.^[1]

Amazon Q Business reached general availability on 30 April 2024.^[1]

Retrieval, meaning the step of finding relevant documents before the assistant writes an answer, is what lets an answer rest on the company's own material. Connectors let the assistant reach documents where they are stored, such as a file store or a messaging tool. Plugins go a step further and let the assistant carry out an action, such as updating a ticket, rather than only reading information.

The two launch Regions of the preview were both in the United States, and the plans were based on users, so organisations paid according to the number of people who used the product.^[1]

Impact

The announcement introduced AWS's assistant for company work, with the controls for permissions, sources and topics described above. The product moved from preview to general availability as Amazon Q Business on 30 April 2024.^[1]