By Jim Lundy
Generative AI Wars: Is Amazon Q ready to Compete with Microsoft and Google?
At Amazon re:Invent, one of the biggest stories was the announcement of Amazon Q, their generative AI-based assistant.
Amazon Q leverages the Amazon Bedrock generative AI platform, but it did not disclose which LLM it will use.
This blog compares and contrasts some of the aspects of Amazon Q versus the other intelligent assistants on the market.
Amazon Q: Is a lower price enough to entice users?
Amazon Q starts at $20 per month, which is $5 to $10 dollars less per month than what Microsoft plans to charge for its Microsoft Co Pilot for Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Dynamics 365. Google also is charging $30 for its Duet for Google Workspace However for getting support, you need to start with the $25.00 per month plan or you are out of luck.
Amazon AWS never met a credit card it didn’t like and if you want to start using Amazon Q for free you must have a paid Amazon account with an active credit card on file. However, to get support, you need to start with the $25.00 per month plan or you are out of luck.
We would note that both Google Bard which is free to Gmail users and Microsoft Copilot formerly known as Bing Search is also free to Microsoft users.
The charge for Amazon Q connected to Amazon Connect (its Contact Center offering) is $40 dollars a month, which is $10 more than Microsoft CoPilot or Google Duet.
Analysis: Amazon Q Builder ($25 per user/mo) is the Version to buy
The Amazon Q Business offer is really conversational search tool that can be connected to 40 business applications that your enterprise subscribes to. However, with that plan – if you get stuck – there is no support.
Our take is you are better off going with Amazon Q Builder at $25 – so you get support. That said, Amazon Q Builder is really a paid plan to allow users to navigate and optimize their AWS instances.
All that said, Amazon AWS, in its quest to charge for everything, is putting it at risk in the GenAI wars – because Google and Microsoft have added Generative AI to their Search platforms.
Google Bard and Microsoft Copilot – basically are the new FREE search interfaces. While Amazon Q is free to use with a developer account in preview mode, it is not free when it ships. Our take Amazon should offer a free version of Amazon Q, but it will not because AWS is not a player in Enterprise Search – even though it is building an Ad business.
Which LLM is Amazon Q Using?
For Amazon Q, Amazon is NOT disclosing which LLM It is using. To us that is problematic.
Both Google and Microsoft fully disclose which LLM they are using and they also share benchmark performance data. Note: Amazon Bedrock is its open Generative AI platform, which allows multiple LLMs to run inside of it.
The possible LLMs Amazon is using for Amazon Q could include Anthropic Claude, Megatron-Turing NLG, or Meta Llama. Megatron-Turing NLG supports over $530 Billion Parameters and is open source. Open Source is typically what Amazon leverages for its services.
Is Anthropic the Secret LLM that Amazon Q uses?
However, given the $4 Billion investment made by Amazon into Anthropic in September, Aragon feels that there is a higher probability that Anthropic is the LLM that Amazon is getting behind.
Amazon Q is Optimized for Answering Amazon AWS Questions
It is not a surprise that Amazon claims that Amazon Q has been trained on 17 years’ worth of Amazon AWS data. Amazon always optimizes its services to work best with other Amazon services.
Is Amazon Behind in Generative AI?
Aragon Research would say that Amazon is behind. Partly because it is not investing in its own LLM and partly because it has not launched an Intelligent Assistant like Google and Microsoft.
It is important to note that Amazon wants customers to develop on AWS as it offers a few packaged applications.
On Generative AI, one could argue that Microsoft hasn’t invested as much. However, given its larger stake in OpenAI, Microsoft can claim significant ownership of that IP.
Google has made substantial investments in LLMs with PaLM, PaLM II, and Gemini, which was made available yesterday with Google Bard. Microsoft Bing Search, now Microsoft CoPilot is also generally available.
Will Amazon Q Compete with Microsoft 365 CoPilot and Google Duet?
Time will tell how much functionality that Amazon Q will offer. Right now, Amazon Q is really conversational Search, which makes it a face-off versus Google Bard or Microsoft CoPilot (formerly Microsoft Bing Chat). So today, Amazon Q is not an intelligent assistant, which is what Google Duet and Microsoft 365 CoPilot are.
Aragon Research expects Amazon to start moving faster, but the reality is that Amazon AWS is more of a Platform as a Service (PaaS). As such it is not as much of a Packaged Application service. So Amazon will be more interested in getting customers to customize Amazon Q for their own needs – and will be happy to charge them its developer rates for all the time it takes to develop those Generative AI-based Assistants.
Bottom Line
The bottom line is Amazon AWS is now in the Generative AI space. However Amazon Q Business is more of a tunable conversational service that is similar to Google Bard and Microsoft Copilot. Amazon is pushing hard to for Bedrock to be able to be used with multiple LLMs, However, both Google and Microsoft also offer identical capabilities. Amazon is behind and it must race to catch up to Google and Microsoft in Generative AI. Developing…
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