Both Microsoft Copilot and Amazon Q mark significant advancements in integrating GenAI into daily work practices for the enterprise. While each integrates very well with its creators’ ecosystems, it might surprise you that they are quite different products.
Previously, we analyzed Amazon Q, including set up, Amazon Q use cases, and whether it delivers quality content.
Note that this article is not a comparison between Amazon Q and GitHub Copilot. While Amazon Q is geared toward business and developer use cases, Microsoft offers GitHub Copilot for developers as a separate product under the GitHub brand.
Read on to find out what one tool had to say about the other—and which bot refused to answer!
What Is Microsoft Copilot?
Microsoft Copilot is a tool that enables professionals who are non-technical end users to leverage GenAI. It doesn’t require a deeper understanding of the underlying technology, as highlighted by its integration with Microsoft Office (which is also used by a broad range of people without a technical background). This integration allows everyone to enhance their productivity with AI in the familiar Office environment.
In contrast, Amazon Q targets a broader audience. It is divided into Amazon Q Business and Amazon Q Developer, which are each geared to a different user base. Amazon Q Developer features coding companions and developer agents to support software engineers in their daily work. Amazon Q Business enables the creation of AI-powered chatbots, making Q Business a lower-level tool than Microsoft Copilot. The resulting chatbots don’t require much technical know-how, but creating them involves more than activating Copilot in Microsoft Office.
Technology and Features in Microsoft Copilot vs. Amazon Q
Microsoft Copilot incorporates AI models for productivity applications like Microsoft Word or Excel. With its primary emphasis on natural language processing and understanding, Copilot offers users an alternative interface for interacting with the application. Microsoft Copilot makes contextual suggestions inside Office applications and comes with features such as document summarization and data analysis. Figure 2 shows how Copilot creates charts for data in Microsoft Excel.
Amazon Q Business utilizes AWS’s vast machine-learning capabilities (e.g., Amazon Lex for natural language comprehension, Amazon Bedrock for AI training, etc.) and pre-trained models for diverse use cases. It enables the creation of chatbots using pre-built templates for quick deployment. Figure 3 shows an Amazon Q Business chatbot.
Learn how to build a chatbot with Amazon Q.
User Experience in Microsoft Copilot vs. Amazon Q
Microsoft Copilot is intuitive for users familiar with Microsoft applications, as the interface is consistent with other Microsoft products. For example, in Microsoft Word, Copilot is accessible from multiple locations.
Video 1 shows how you can access Copilot from the ribbon menu at the top, the context menu of the document content. If Copilot is open in a drawer, it gets a tab icon like other tools.
Amazon Q Business, on the other hand, is a chatbot creation tool and thus comes with two user interfaces.
The interface for the chatbot users offers a simple and intuitive way to talk to the bot. Figure 3 above shows the end-user interface you use to converse with the chatbot.
The interface for creating chatbots is much more complex and requires some technical expertise. Figure 4 shows a step from the wizard to streamline the process, but it still requires know-how the average user doesn’t usually possess.
After reviewing the Amazon Q setup process, we noticed it required providing other AWS resources, like an IAM Identity Center. But the AWS docs feature an Amazon Q-based chatbot trained on the docs and all technical AWS articles to help with this setup process.
Figure 5 shows a screenshot of the Amazon Q integration in AWS docs.
Ecosystem Integration in Microsoft Copilot vs. Amazon Q
With its Office 365 integration, Microsoft Copilot can leverage existing applications and user data. It is integrated into each Office application, similar to other tools like the Page Designer in Microsoft Word. This allows it to provide context-aware assistance, such as generating text, presentations, and charts based on document or worksheet content.
Video 2 shows Microsoft Copilot generating a presentation about cloud computing with just a few clicks.
Amazon Q Business integrates with various AWS services, IAM perhaps of most interest to enterprise customers. This integration makes Amazon Q a flexible tool for developers and organizations already using AWS for their infrastructure. The API provided by Amazon Q Business chatbots is also a powerful addition that enables the use of chatbots inside other applications.
The screenshot in Figure 6 shows the Amazon Q Business IAM integration. The bot itself can use an IAM role to manage its access to AWS resources. You can also assign users and groups who should have access to the bot. A powerful feature for internal sensitive information repositories and knowledge bases that might interact with sensitive data.
Deployment and Scalability in Microsoft Copilot vs. Amazon Q
Since Microsoft Copilot is integrated into all Office applications, the deployment requires activating a Copilot Pro subscription. For companies already invested in the Microsoft ecosystem, no extra steps are required, and it scales effortlessly with each new user.
Amazon Q Business is available through an AWS account, making it a viable option for businesses already invested in AWS. The chatbots are powered by AWS’ cloud infrastructure, enabling them to scale automatically.
Pricing and Accessibility in Microsoft Copilot vs. Amazon Q
Microsoft Copilot’s Office integration follows a simple subscription model.
Copilot Pro subscription costs:
- Private use: $20 a month
- Enterprises: $29 a month per user. The cost for an eight-person team, for example, would be around $2,819 a year.
Integrated into multiple locations in all Microsoft Office apps, Copilot is easily accessible to existing Office users.
Amazon Q Business’s pricing is also based on a subscription model.
Amazon Q Business subscription pricing:
- Basic: Starting at $3 per month for the basic features
- Enterprise: Up to $20 a month for enterprise features such as seamless sign-on and permission-aware chats.
Note that Amazon Q incurs additional costs for the chatbot’s infrastructure, which can be highly variable. For example, when building a chatbot using Amazon Q, we paid around $50 for just one week, and it was unclear if that would be the only computation cost for the initial data ingestion or whether there would be recurring storage costs for the RAG system.
Microsoft Copilot or Amazon Q: Which Is Right for You?
So is it Microsoft Copilot or Amazon Q for the win? Which GenAI tool is best suited for your needs?
Since both Microsoft Copilot and Amazon Q are large language models with general knowledge, I thought it would be interesting to ask them about their opinions about each other.
Amazon Q refused to respond, likely due to its guardrail feature that limits its responses to specific use cases—in this case, providing support to AWS users.
Microsoft Copilot, however, gave its opinion based on the information on the AWS website, highlighting Amazon Q’s flexible data integration and security features.
While Microsoft Copilot and Amazon Q cater to different needs and audiences, both enable business users to leverage GenAI in their daily work. Still, Copilot focuses on Microsoft Office applications, while Amazon Q offers a flexible platform for creating AI solutions tailored to various business needs.
Microsoft Copilot’s response even offered an unbiased opinion on Amazon Q:
Amazon Q caters to business and engineering needs. Q Developer is a coding companion that helps with refactoring and even language conversions. Q Business can ingest data from websites to all popular databases, making it a perfect tool for anyone in an organization who needs to browse enterprise data repositories.
The integration with Amazon IAM is probably the main selling point of Amazon Q. It allows every AWS customer to manage Q’s permissions using the tools and services they already use.
If your team works mainly on Office tasks, you’d be better off with Microsoft Copilot, with its superb integration with Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and other apps from the Microsoft Office suite.
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