Amazon Unveils Nova Act: A New AI Agent for Web Automation

Amazon has officially entered the AI agent race with Nova Act, a general-purpose AI system capable of controlling web browsers and performing automated actions independently. Announced on Monday, Nova Act marks a major step in Amazon’s artificial intelligence strategy, competing directly with OpenAI’s Operator and Anthropic’s Computer Use.

What is Nova Act?

Developed by Amazon’s AGI Lab in San Francisco, Nova Act is designed to navigate websites, fill out forms, and execute simple tasks like booking reservations or ordering food. Alongside its launch, Amazon is introducing the Nova Act SDK, a developer toolkit for building and integrating AI-driven web automation tools.

Nova Act will also power Alexa+, the upcoming generative AI-enhanced upgrade to Amazon’s voice assistant, giving it expanded capabilities beyond voice commands. However, the version released today is a "research preview", meaning it’s still in development.

How Nova Act Stacks Up Against Competitors

Amazon claims Nova Act outperforms competing AI agents on internal tests. Specifically:

• On ScreenSpot Web Text, which measures how well AI interacts with text, Nova Act scored 94%, surpassing OpenAI’s CUA (88%) and Anthropic’s Claude 3.7 Sonnet (90%).

• However, Amazon has not yet benchmarked Nova Act on widely recognized evaluations like WebVoyager, leaving some uncertainty about its broader performance.

Despite launching later than its competitors, Amazon’s Alexa+ integration could give Nova Act the largest consumer reach, potentially making it a major player in AI-driven automation.

The AGI Connection

Nova Act is the first product to come out of Amazon’s AGI Lab, co-led by David Luan and Pieter Abbeel, both former OpenAI researchers. Luan, previously the founder of Adept, sees AI agents as a crucial step toward artificial general intelligence (AGI)—a system that can perform any computer-based task a human can.

However, Nova Act isn’t aiming for full autonomy just yet. Amazon has designed it to handle short, well-defined tasks, while giving developers control over when human intervention is required.

Can Amazon Solve AI Agent Reliability?

AI agents from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic have struggled with speed, consistency, and reliability. Many require frequent human oversight and fail in complex workflows. Amazon’s success with Nova Act could be a defining moment for its AI strategy, particularly if it delivers a smoother, more dependable experience.

With the long-delayed Alexa+ on the horizon, Amazon is betting big on AI agents. Will Nova Act finally crack the code, or will it suffer the same pitfalls as its competitors? Time will tell.