Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud customers are clamoring to get their hands on the ChatGPT-style technology the company unveiled six weeks ago. But instead of being allowed to test it, many are being told to sit tight, prompting concerns the artificial intelligence tool isn’t fully baked.
Amazon’s announcement that it had entered the generative AI race was uncharacteristically vague, according to longtime employees and customers. Amazon Web Services product launches typically include glowing testimonials from three to five customers, these people said. This time the company cited just one: Coda, a document-editing startup. Coda Chief Executive Officer Shishir Mehrota said that after testing the technology he awarded Amazon an “incomplete” grade. The company’s generative AI tools are “all fairly early,” he said in an interview. “They’re building on and repackaging services that they already offered.” Mehrota added that he expected AWS’s AI tools to be competitive long-term. People familiar with AWS product launches wondered if Amazon released the AI tools to counter perceptions it has fallen behind cloud rivals Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google.
