Amazon Q

What it is

Amazon Q is a generative AI assistant designed for work, built by AWS. It can hold conversations, solve problems, generate content and take actions by connecting to a company's repositories, code, data and enterprise systems.^[1]

Origins

AWS announced Amazon Q in preview on 28 November 2023 at re:Invent, the company's annual conference. The launch post was written by Antje Barth.^[1] The preview launched in US East (N. Virginia) and US West (Oregon) with user-based plans.^[1] Amazon Q Business became generally available on 30 April 2024.^[1]

Key features

Amazon Q respects each user's existing identities, roles and permissions, so it shows only the information that the user already has access to. Administrators can limit it to trusted company information, which reduces hallucinations, the term for answers that are not supported by the underlying content.^[1] It cites its original sources, so that answers can be checked.^[1]

At launch Amazon Q offered more than 40 built-in data connectors. They included Amazon S3, Google Drive, Microsoft SharePoint, Salesforce, ServiceNow and Slack. It also offered plugins for Jira, Salesforce, ServiceNow and Zendesk, which let the assistant take actions in those systems.^[1]

Administrators can also restrict the topics the assistant covers.^[1] The product can use an existing Amazon Kendra retriever and integrates with SAML 2.0 identity providers.^[1]

A company assistant of this kind has to respect what each employee is allowed to see. Amazon Q applies the permissions that already exist in a company's systems, so the assistant does not reveal material that a user could not open directly.^[1] Citations let a reader return to the original document, which matters when an answer is used for a decision.^[1]

Where it fits

Amazon Q Business, the version for work, is the form that became generally available on 30 April 2024.^[1]