Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced on Nov. 28 the launch of ‘Q,’ an AI-powered virtual assistant and chatbot to enhance workplace productivity.

The chatbot, capable of engaging in conversations, problem-solving, and generating content and insights, can access company information to provide tailored responses. AWS plans to offer user-based plans with customized features and fees, emphasizing its commitment to privacy and security by not using content from Amazon Q users to train the service’s AI model.

Q is expected to be available through Amazon Connect, the company’s customer service product, and Quicksight, its business intelligence tool.

In the same announcement, AWS revealed it is ready to compete with other work-oriented AI products such as Google Assistant with Bard and Microsoft 365 Copilot. There are also reports that AWS is developing a separate AI search tool for retail users.

Other AWS updates

In other AI-related developments, AWS announced the production of two new chip families designed for AI applications – Graviton4 and Trainium2.

These chips, available through the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), promise improved price performance and energy efficiency. They are suitable for various machine learning and AI applications and stand alongside chips from other firms such as AMD, Intel, and Nvidia.

A diverse range of companies, including AI firm Anthropic, software firm Databricks, security firm Datadog, gaming platform Epic, observability platform Honeycomb, and multinational software firm SAP, are reportedly using these chips.

The timing of these developments is crucial as AWS’ continued chip production will help compensate for recent Nvidia’s AI chip shortages. These innovations emphasize AWS’s aggressive push into the expanding AI landscape.