Amazon and DeepSeek Integration

Amazon quickly integrated DeepSeek AI models into Bedrock due to high demand in January. Amazon wants to promote its products as faster and more secure alternatives to DeepSeek. The cloud giant warns employees not to share confidential information with DeepSeek. In late January, as DeepSeek sent shockwaves through the tech industry, Amazon saw a huge spike in companies requesting access to the Chinese AI model on its development tool Bedrock.

Amazon swiftly added DeepSeek to Bedrock. Some employees who spoke to Business Insider felt the approval process was unusually fast. Amazon's CEO Andy Jassy later told investors the company moved quickly to meet customer demand. DeepSeek's sudden rise has spurred swift reactions inside Amazon. The repercussions have been felt across product updates, sales pitches, and development efforts, according to internal documents seen by BI and people familiar with the matter.

Reactions from Tech Industry

The responses show how fast-moving AI discoveries can whipsaw even the biggest and smartest technology companies. Amazon rivals, including OpenAI, Google, Meta, and Microsoft have also been forced to respond to the DeepSeek impact.

Amazon's Strategy

An Amazon spokesperson said the company's strategy has always focused on providing secure access to the latest models through AWS, giving customers control over their data to customize and build generative AI applications. "Delivering DeepSeek models is an example of that," the spokesperson added in a statement to BI. "We're extremely pleased with the feedback that we've received from the thousands of customers who have already deployed DeepSeek on AWS."

Privacy Concerns

DeepSeek's AI models upended the tech world in January with their powerful performance and low cost. Tech stocks plunged as investors questioned US tech companies' massive spending on computing products. For now, Amazon continues to add DeepSeek-related features.

Comparison with Nova

AWS has also told employees to leverage DeepSeek's shortcomings when selling Nova. The guidelines say Nova models are faster than DeepSeek's models, based on third-party benchmark data, and more secure given AWS's more robust "responsible AI" standards.

Internal Reactions

On the day DeepSeek roiled the stock market in late January, Amazon employees created an internal Slack channel called "Deepseek-interest." More than 1,300 employees joined the channel in just a few days. Meanwhile, Amazon now discourages employees from using DeepSeek on their work computers.

Moving on from DeepSeek

Perhaps in a sign of how fast things change in AI, some Amazon employees already seem to be moving on from DeepSeek to other Chinese AI offerings. One person wrote in the internal Slack channel that AWS should start considering other China-based models, like Alibaba's Qwen.

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