- Amazon recently launched Cedric, an in-house AI chatbot, to boost employee productivity.
- Cedric is designed for safe use, addressing privacy concerns with external AI tools.
- Amazon has repeatedly warned employees not to use third-party AI chatbots, including ChatGPT.
Amazon warns employees not to use third-party AI chatbots like ChatGPT. Instead, staff are now encouraged to use a new internal tool called Cedric, Business Insider has learned.
Cedric is a “general purpose AI chatbot” that is “more secure than ChatGPT,” said an internal document obtained by BI. Amazon employees can “use it to ask questions, summarize documents and generate new ideas.”
Cedric’s goal is to help Amazon employees increase their productivity and job satisfaction since external AI tools are unavailable for security reasons, the document said.
“It’s been more than a year since ChatGPT Enterprise and Co-pilot Enterprise were released, but Amazonas has been behind the curve due to limited options that are safe for business use,” the document says. “Without an AI Assistant, Amazonians will have lower job satisfaction than other companies that use these tools. In addition, companies that use AI will have a higher decision-making speed and be more productive – therefore they will be able to serve customers faster and better than Amazon.”
Cedric’s launch highlights the challenges companies face as they seek to use AI tools safely and securely. While AI chatbots can potentially help workers, the risk of employees sharing confidential business information, intentionally or not, is high. Questions remain about how AI-generating companies handle confidential information coming in and out of their systems and whether this data is used to train models.
A sharp issue
For Amazon, this is a particularly acute issue. Its rival, Microsoft, has launched AI assistive products and is a close partner and investor in OpenAI, the startup behind ChatGPT. Shortly after the release of ChatGPT in late 2022, Amazon began warning employees not to share confidential information with the chatbot. Earlier this year, Amazon formalized internal guidelines banning external AI tools, including ChatGPT, for business purposes.
In recent years, a number of large companies, including Apple, Samsung and JP Morgan Chase, have restricted their employees from using ChatGPT due to privacy concerns. This has created a hidden wave of employees secretly using such AI tools at work, dubbed “CheatGPT,” because the technology can help them do their jobs faster.
In an email to BI, an Amazon spokesperson said the company supports the use of generative AI technology at work, including Cedric, and internal guidelines help employees “use these services while properly managing confidential information.”
“Amazon employees use internal generative AI tools every day to innovate on behalf of our customers. We have safeguards in place for employee use of these technologies, which is focused on protecting confidential information, including access guidelines on third-party AI generating services.” the spokesman added.
‘Reading and Writing Companion’
Internally, Amazon is calling Cedric “your secure document reading and writing companion,” according to the internal document. He suggests employees use it to create Amazon’s famous six-page memos “in seconds” and turn meeting notes into email-ready formats “safely and securely.”
The internal document added that Cedric was trained in chat text, so employees are encouraged to use plain English as if speaking in conversation. The new tool can also help generate new ideas and solve problems. One of the suggested use cases showed that employees could upload Word documents, PDF files and Excel spreadsheets and ask what a VP had to say about the content.
All Amazon employees now have access to Cedric. Several employees told BI that Amazon began promoting Cedric more broadly across the company a few weeks ago, after an early pilot period.
For Cedric, Amazon didn’t use its Titan AI model. Instead, Amazon used its Bedrock artificial intelligence development platform and Anthropic’s Claude large language model, according to the document. (Amazon has invested heavily in Anthropic).
Approved for ‘highly confidential data’
Cedric is one of many AI tools that Amazon has recently launched or is building in-house. Amazon Q is its flagship AI tool aimed at businesses and developers. Separately, Amazon is working on another AI chatbot codenamed Metis and an AI-enhanced Alexa app, BI previously reported.
Unlike those apps, Cedric is for internal use only, and its output “cannot be used outside of Amazon,” the internal document warned.
Safety is a key point for Cedric. Software developers and Amazon Web Services employees are approved to use Cedric with “highly confidential data,” the document says. Cedric does not share any data back into the underlying underlying model for training purposes or send it to any third party developers. Chat history is stored in an encrypted database.
For code generation, however, employees should use Amazon Q instead of Cedric, the document advises.
Cedric should not be used for any “subsequent” decision that could have a “legal or similarly significant effect on an individual,” the document added.
However, Amazon seems confident in Cedric’s ability and encourages employees to use it before meetings with the company’s top executives.
“How would a CEO respond?” the internal document suggested asking the AI chatbot.
Do you work at Amazon? Got a tip?
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