Amazon.com Inc. AMZN CEO Andy Jassy announced that the company's generative artificial intelligence assistant, Amazon Q, has significantly reduced software upgrade times, saving thousands of work hours.
What happened: In a LinkedIn post on Thursday, Jassy said Amazon Q has been integrated into the company's internal systems to streamline basic software updates.
He noted that the average time it takes to upgrade an application to Java 17 has dropped from 50 days of development time to just a few hours.
“It was a big turning point for us.”
Jassy emphasized that these efficiencies have saved Amazon the equivalent of “4,500 years of developer work,” and highlighted the tool's accuracy, noting that 79% of AI-generated code reviews were shipped without any additional changes.
Beyond saving time, Jassy noted that the upgrades will improve security, reduce infrastructure costs, and drive efficiencies of $260 million annually. He acknowledged that AI tools like Amazon Q will boost productivity.
“One of the most tedious (yet important) tasks for software development teams is updating foundational software. It's not new feature work, and it doesn't feel like it's moving the experience forward. As a result, this work is either disliked, postponed in favor of more exciting work, or both,” says Jessy.
Jassy confirmed that Amazon plans to continue using Amazon Q, and that the Q team is looking to add more transformation capabilities for developers.
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Why it matters: Amazon Q's success in saving thousands of worker hours marks a significant milestone for the company, especially considering its shaky start.
The AI chatbot came under fire shortly after its release for producing erroneous outputs that it called “hallucinations.” Officials blamed these issues on its rushed deployment and the use of a less-skilled version of Anthropic's Claude AI model. To address these issues, Amazon expanded its team of human reviewers to manually tweak the chatbot's output.
Despite these early setbacks, Amazon Q is making impressive progress. In April, Jassy highlighted Amazon Q's potential to revolutionize software development, particularly in helping developers migrate from Microsoft Windows to Linux. He noted that the AI chatbot could ease the transition from older versions of Java to newer, more secure versions, potentially saving developers months of work.
Additionally, the broader impact of AI on coding was discussed in June by Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman, who suggested that AI could soon dominate coding tasks and fundamentally change what it means to be a developer by 2025.
Amazon's advances in AI have also caught the attention of investors. Stephanie Link, chief investment strategist and portfolio manager at Hightower Advisors, recently doubled down on Amazon shares, citing the company's multibillion-dollar AI revenue stream as a key factor.
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This story was produced with Benzinga Neuro and edited by Kaustubh Bagalkote.
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