Amazon Web Services Inc. today announced the general availability of AWS App Studio, its popular artificial intelligence service for creating business applications with natural language prompts.

First announced as a preview in July, AWS App Studio is a generative AI-powered app development tool that makes it possible for users to simply describe what kind of application that they want to build, in their natural language, and then immediately have it built. It requires no coding skills at all.

The tool is there to help workers create internal software tools more quickly. A marketing team might use it to create an application for managing creative assets used in their ad campaigns, or an information technology team might want to build an app that tracks ticket requests for employee’s workstations.

In a blog post, AWS developer advocate Donnie Prakoso explained that AWS App Studio is all about empowering everyone to become an app builder. “Whether you are an IT Project Manager, Data Engineer, Enterprise Architect, or Solution Architect, simply describe your requirements in natural language, and within minutes, App Studio generates fully functional applications complete with multipage UIs, data models, and custom business logic,” he wrote.

To get started, users can enter a simple text prompt, describing what kind of app they want to build. That could be a simple, one-sentence description of the app, saying what it will be used for, or a more detailed overview that outlines different features the user wants to see.

App Studio then generates a detailed list of the features and suggestions for the app’s interface. Users can review this list, and add new features or tweak the interface with additional prompts. Once the user is satisfied, App Studio will take a few minutes to build the new application. Then, once the initial version is ready, users have the opportunity to customize its interface using drag-and-drop tools, so they can easily add or remove different elements.

Other features include the ability to integrate the AI-generated app with external services. So a revenue tracking app might be configured to pull sales data from a system such as Salesforce, or Amazon’s S3 storage repository.

Finally, users will get to test the app works as intended, before deploying it in production with a few simple clicks. Once the app is deployed, App Studio will create a dedicated URL to access it. For security, there are role-based access controls that can be applied, so only authorized employees are allowed to use the app.

With AWS App Studio’s official launch, it’s getting a few interesting updates, Prakoso said. One of the most interesting is the ability to modify existing applications with natural language commands. Once an app has been generated and deployed, users will be able to update it at will using additional natural language prompts. They go to the app chatbot and describe the changes they want to make, and after seeing what the change looks like, the user simply confirms the update.

Amazon has also introduced the ability to make applications more intelligent by adding generative AI capabilities such as text summarization, content generation and file analysis. In addition, users can now generate and add custom business logic using their natural language, and customize the app’s theme and style, for instance by switching to a Light mode or Dark mode, or else a specific color that matches their company’s branding.

Prakoso said AWS App Studio is generally available now in Amazon’s US West (Oregon) and Europe (Ireland) AWS regions, with more regions to come in future.

The company positions AWS App Studio as a more economical alternative to existing low-code application development tools, and in fact, it is entirely free to use. Customers only have to pay for the time employees spend using the applications it generates, and the company claims this makes it up to 80% more affordable than rival services.

What’s more, new customers will be able to use their newly generated applications for free for the first 60 days, the company said.

Images: AWS