Bedrock is a new service from Amazon that allows users to build generative AI applications using pre-trained models from startups like AI21 Labs, Anthropic, and Stability AI. Bedrock also provides access to Titan FMs, a family of AI models developed in-house by Amazon. The service is currently in “limited preview,” and the company has made significant investments in training in-house models ahead of the launch. According to Grand View Research, the generative AI market, which includes systems that generate text, audio, and speech, could be worth more than $100 billion by 2030. Amazon’s motivation for entering the generative AI space is not only to capture a piece of this rapidly growing market, but also to re-energize its cloud business, which may be slowing. Amazon reported 27% year-over-year revenue growth for its cloud services in Q3 2022, but the increase slowed to a mid-20% rate by the end of the quarter. Meanwhile, Amazon’s cloud division’s operating margin was down 4 percentage points year over year in the same quarter, indicating that Amazon expanded too quickly. Amazon is serious about generative AI, so it has made CodeWhisperer, a system that generates code from text prompts, available for free to individual developers.
