Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud computing arm of Amazon, experienced a 13-hour outage in December of last year — one of at least two disruptions in the same month. According to reports from the Financial Times, the incident was caused by changes made by an internal artificial intelligence agent.
The AI agent in question, named Kiro, is an autonomous coding tool designed to handle resource management tasks. Engineers reportedly authorized Kiro to implement changes in an internal system. However, the AI decided to “delete and recreate the environment,” triggering a failure that primarily affected AWS operations in China.
In a statement to the Financial Times, Amazon said the impact of the outage was “extremely limited” and did not affect core services such as computing, storage, or databases. The company attributed the problem to human error rather than an inherent flaw in the AI itself. Amazon explained that Kiro requests authorization before taking action, but the employee involved had broader permissions than intended.
A Pattern of Incidents?
Sources within AWS suggest this was not the only recent incident involving the company’s AI tools. At least one other similar event is said to have occurred in recent months, although Amazon officially acknowledges only one incident with direct customer impact.
The revelations come at a sensitive time for AWS, which underpins a significant portion of the world’s digital infrastructure. The company faced another major outage in October, which left dozens of websites offline for hours. That incident was reported by Olhar Digital (see link).
These recurring failures have reignited concerns about the growing dependence on a handful of cloud providers. Critics warn that as AI tools are given more autonomy, the risk of cascading failures increases — especially if human oversight is not carefully calibrated.
Workforce Reductions and the Rise of AI
Adding to the discussion, Amazon has announced plans to cut 16,000 jobs this year, following 14,000 layoffs in the previous year. CEO Andy Jassy has linked the cuts to organizational culture but has also publicly stated that “AI-driven efficiency gains will reduce the need for human labor in the coming years”.
Source: Olhar Digital
