Amazon has launched a new artificial intelligence model, Nova Act, which is designed to perform tasks such as online shopping in your browser. Currently, it is only available to developers in a “research preview” mode, but Amazon is also expanding access to its other Nova AI models through a web portal, making them easier to find and use.
Nova Act is a new model that functions similarly to OpenAI’s Operator agent. Amazon claims that Act can perform web searches, make purchases, or answer questions about what is displayed on the screen, including the ability to perform tasks on a schedule. It can also recognize more detailed instructions, such as telling it to “decline insurance” when making a purchase. Act is currently only available to developers, but Amazon says it is already being used to perform some online tasks in the updated Alexa Plus assistant.
Act is the first product released by Amazon’s Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) lab, which says its “dream” is to have agents “perform broad, complex, multi-step tasks like organizing a wedding or handling complex IT tasks to improve business productivity.” Amazon and OpenAI are far from the only companies pursuing AI agents, hoping that people will be willing to pay for AI assistants that can perform tasks, not just answer questions or create gifs.
Act joins the other five Nova models first announced in December 2024, which include a trio of “understanding” models, as well as image and video generators. Instead of claiming to offer the most powerful AI models, Amazon emphasizes the speed and cost of the Nova suite, which it says is “at least 75 percent cheaper” than the competition.
Amazon is now adding a way for developers and others in the US to gain direct access to these models: a website that allows them to use the models to answer queries or create content. Previously, the models were only available through Amazon Bedrock, an AI modeling platform within Amazon Web Services that offers access to Nova as well as third-party models from DeepSeek, Anthropic, Meta, and others. Rohit Prasad, vice president of Amazon AGI, says the site is designed to allow developers to “quickly test their ideas with Nova models and then deploy them at scale in Amazon Bedrock.”
