Amazon Web Services (AWS) has long offered generative AI solutions to optimize everyday business operations. Today, AWS added to those offerings with the general availability of its AI assistant Amazon Q.

AWS first announced Amazon Q in November 2023; on Tuesday, thecompany made the AI-powered assistant generally available for developersandbusinesses, as well as released free courses on using the AI assistant and a new Amazon Q capability in preview.

Amazon Q is designed to act as a secure, AI assistant for businesses, capable of leveraging internal data and performing technical tasks such as coding, debugging, multi-step planning, and reasoning to help developers optimize their workflows, as well as help employees get answers to questions across business data, according to the release.

"Amazon Q is the most capable generative AI-powered assistant available today with industry-leading accuracy, advanced agents capabilities, and best-in-class security that helps developers become more productive and helps business users to accelerate decision making," AWS VP of AI and Data Swami Sivasubramanian said in a statement.

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AWS offers the assistant in several formats: Amazon Q Developer and Amazon Q Business, which are generally available today. The new Amazon Q Apps capability is available in preview.

Amazon Q Developer is meant to help developers spend less time on the "coding muck" and more time on higher-level tasks, such as actual coding. According to the release, developers today spend no more than 30% of their time on coding. The rest of their time is taken up by tedious tasks that Amazon Q can help them do. 

Amazon claims that Q can assist developers and IT professionals with all their tasks, "from coding, testing, and upgrading applications, to troubleshooting, performing security scanning and fixes, and optimizing AWS resources."

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Amazon Q Business meanwhile helps organizations consolidate their vast amounts of data with generative AI in one easy-to-search hub, making accessing important organizational data easier for employees. With Q Business, users can use simple text prompts to access summaries, content, and answers based on enterprise data. 

Amazon Q is also available in Amazon QuickSight, Amazon's Business Intelligence (BI) tool, giving business analysts the ability to build BI dashboards using natural language in minutes, according to the release. 

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Lastly, Amazon Q apps, a new capability in preview found within Amazon Q Business, enables employees to build their own generative AI applications using natural language, meaning they don't need any prior coding experience. Instead, all they need to do is describe the app they want, and Q apps will generate it.

To help users learn how to take advantage of Amazon Q, the company also unveiled two free, self-paced digital courses: Amazon Q Introduction and Amazon Q Business Getting Started. If you want to learn more, AWS also published an in-depth blog post on Amazon QBusiness and Developer .

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