Amazon Web Services has huge plans in store to drive newly released artificial intelligence solutions via partners as AWS begins “democratizing access” to generative AI for customers across the globe, said AWS’ worldwide channel chief, Ruba Borno.

“We’re really excited about how AWS is now democratizing access to foundational models and generative AI for customers,” said Borno, vice president, head of worldwide channels and alliances for AWS, in an interview with CRN. “The key outcomes we’re helping customers with is giving them the flexibility to choose the way they want to build with generative AI.”

AWS’ worldwide channel leader said customers and partners can choose from three options: build their own foundational models with purpose-built machine learning infrastructure, leverage pretrained foundational models as base models to build their applications, or use services with built-in generative AI without requiring any specific expertise in foundational models.

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Generative AI ‘Not New’ At AWS

Before jumping into the generative AI solutions and initiatives AWS is pushing partners and customers to consume, such as Amazon Bedrock and free access to Amazon CodeWhisperer, Borno said it’s key to remember that Amazon isn’t new to the AI market.

With generative AI making headlines in 2023 thanks to the popularity of products like OpenAI’s ChatGPT—which is backed by AWS’ cloud rival Microsoft—Borno wants to remind the market that the Seattle-based cloud company has been investing in machine learning for decades.

“AI and machine learning is not new to Amazon. We’ve been investing heavily in the development and deployment of this technology for two decades, both for customer-facing and internal operations,” said Borno. “Since day one, we’ve helped over 100,000 customers innovate with machine learning and AI.”

Generative AI are applications that can generate images, text, audio and synthetic data in response to prompts. “Our partners play a critical role in helping customers harness generative AI’s potential,” Borno said. “Even though we’re still in early days of generative AI, partners should not delay in building the foundation of their generative AI offerings on AWS.”

In an interview with CRN, Ruba Borno explains AWS’ most important generative AI offerings and channel initiatives that partners should be leveraging in the market today.