Amazon’s AI Agent Nova Act Can Take Over a Web Browser and Make Purchases

Just about every day, a new AI agent is launched with the suggested intention of helping humanity. Amazon’s new agent, dubbed Nova Act, is apparently capable of taking over a web browser and taking actions meant to benefit users.

Nova Act, touted as a next-generation AI model, is a digital assistant that can act semi-autonomously. According to Amazon, the agent should have the ability to finish certain tasks without a human, as well as work in both digital and physical environments.

Purportedly, the agent can make purchases without human intervention and search the internet on its own. In a blog post, Amazon demonstrated how Nova Act can find apartments in Redwood City, California, within biking distance of a train station.

Three levels of Nova Act for text creation are currently available: Micro, Lite, and Pro. The Canvas model produces images, while Reel is for video generation.

The agent is still in the preliminary stages but will improve over time. The AI tool is available in “research preview” for users, including sellers, advertisers, and shoppers. Amazon customers in the U.S. can go to nova.amazon.com and sign in to the platform. It doesn’t appear to be open to users outside the United States as yet.

Amazon’s Nova Act SDK

Alongside Nova Act, Amazon introduced Nova Act SDK. The tool helps developers create customized browser-based AI agents.

“Nova.amazon.com puts the power of Amazon’s frontier intelligence into the hands of every developer and tech enthusiast, making it easier than ever to explore the capabilities of Amazon Nova,” said Rohit Prasad, SVP of Amazon Artificial General Intelligence.

Using Nova Act SDK, developers could create bots capable of taking actions such as ordering food or making hotel reservations. Other applications could include filling out online forms or adding appointments to calendars.

The Nova Act model was developed by Amazon AGI SF Lab in San Francisco, California. With its purpose of bringing together artificial intelligence specialists and engineers to develop state-of-the-art AI models, the lab is run by former OpenAI researchers David Luan and Pieter Abbeel.

Like every other tech company, Amazon is investing heavily in AI. As part of Amazon’s series of AI models, Nova Act was first announced late last year. In January, AI leader OpenAI launched Operator, an autonomous chatbot that can also browse the web without human supervision.