How brands are using Q
Brands are only just beginning to use Q, but how they’ve developed alongside pre-existing Amazon tools may indicate the direction they take with the new chatbot. LG, for example, created an image-to-text captioning platform that is trained on AWS machine learning technology. The AI receives an image from LG clients, teases out its details and outputs relevant captions. LG declined to provide a comment for this story.
Delta and Booking.com have created generative AI bots of their own that hinge on AWS AI technology. Both tools are consumer-facing and are meant to streamline the booking process for travelers. Neither Delta nor Booking.com responded to requests for comment.
To be sure, Amazon is not the first provider to roll out business-focused AI tools. Microsoft offers Copilot, OpenAI provides ChatGPT Enterprise and Salesforce has Einstein. But Curran sees Q as a more seamless option for marketers given its position inside the AWS ecosystem. Clients can easily create applications around specific Q capabilities, such as a “blog expert,” and connect them with various data sources, including from non-Amazon services such as Slack and Zendesk.
“It’s a step in the direction of lowering the barrier to entry for the building of large apps with LLMs (large language models),” Curran said.
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Amazon’s AI attempts
Amazon has been steadily growing its efforts in the generative AI space. In October, the company rolled out a beta version of an image generator that exists within Amazon Ads—specifically designed to help marketers create campaign assets. In September, it made a $4 billion investment in Anthropic to improve the research lab’s AI models and expand access for AWS customers.
These new AI tools are largely an effort by Amazon to incentivize companies to join its data-rich ecosystem, said Chris Comstock, chief growth officer at data standards company Claravine. The rationale, he said, is that companies can generate first-party data using services such as its new clean room, then access generative AI tools to develop strategy from that data. Claravine is a business partner with AWS.
Of course, marketers generate first-party data with other tech companies as well, some of whom are also active in the enterprise AI space. The jury is still out on whether the wiser strategy is to strike partnerships with numerous vendors or stick with one.
Forrester’s Curran sees the need for numerous partnerships dwindling as vendors build out their offerings, which will likely look similar to those of competitors.
However, Amazon depends on a network of different providers. Bedrock, the foundational platform upon which all of its generative AI tools are built, is composed of LLMs from Meta, Anthropic, Stability AI and others. Interoperability is an important requirement for enterprise-focused generative AI, said Jon Williams, global head of agency business development at AWS.
Image generation for businesses
As with Q, Titan Image Generator is intended to consume a business’ proprietary data to create a more bespoke output. A brand wanting to extend a social media campaign, for instance, could train Titan Image Generator on the style of images previously used, such that the platform will produce more images that fit the campaign.