Amazon sells its own AI models as Amazon Nova, a family AWS announced on December 3, 2024 and offers through Amazon Bedrock, the managed model service that became generally available on September 28, 2023. AWS documentation says Bedrock inputs and outputs are not used to train Nova or other models. The Nova 2 generation, announced on December 2, 2025, supports one million tokens of context, and by October 2026 AWS had already retired the first-generation Canvas, Reel, and Sonic models.
Key takeaways
- Nova models are offered through Amazon Bedrock, which also hosts models from other companies, so "Amazon AI" in a developer setting usually means a service plus several models.
- The first Nova generation had four text-understanding models (Micro, Lite, Pro, Premier) plus image, video, and speech models. Nova Canvas, Nova Reel, and the first Nova Sonic reached end-of-life in September 2026.
- The Nova 2 guide lists three models in October 2026: Nova 2 Lite, Nova 2 Sonic, and Nova Multimodal Embeddings, each with up to one million tokens of context. Model lists, Regions, and prices change often, so each figure here carries its date.
- AWS states that content sent to Bedrock is not used to improve base models and is stored in the Region where Bedrock is used.
- Stanford's December 2025 transparency index report on Nova Premier shows disclosure on distribution and terms, but not on parameter counts, training compute, or training data sources.
Bedrock is the service and Nova is one model family inside it
AWS describes Amazon Bedrock as a fully managed service for building generative AI applications with foundation models. At general availability on September 28, 2023, it offered models from AI21 Labs, Anthropic, Cohere, Meta, Stability AI, and Amazon, in the US East (N. Virginia) and US West (Oregon) Regions. The AWS FAQ page now lists many more providers, among them DeepSeek, Mistral AI, and OpenAI. The practical consequence is that a company using Bedrock can switch between Amazon's models and other companies' models through one interface, and the terms for each model provider can differ.
Nova is the part Amazon built itself. The AWS Nova user guide says the models must be reached through an API in Amazon Bedrock, so there is no separate Nova product for developers outside that service. A consumer chat site also exists, and it follows different data terms, discussed below.
What the Nova models are, by documented specification
The December 3, 2024 AWS announcement introduced three text-understanding models, Micro, Lite, and Pro, plus Canvas for images and Reel for video. Premier, still in training at that point, joined the understanding group later, and Sonic added speech. The table follows the AWS Nova version 1 user guide as checked on October 27, 2026, with a status column taken from the Bedrock model lifecycle page on the same date.
| Model | Input | Output | Context or limit | Status on October 27, 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nova Micro | Text | Text | 128,000 tokens | No end-of-life date listed |
| Nova Lite | Text, image, video | Text | 300,000 tokens | No end-of-life date listed |
| Nova Pro | Text, image, video | Text | 300,000 tokens | No end-of-life date listed |
| Nova Premier | Text, image, video | Text | One million tokens | No end-of-life date listed; press reports say it is in maintenance mode |
| Nova Canvas | Text, image | Image | Prompts up to 1,024 characters | Reached end-of-life September 30, 2026 |
| Nova Reel | Text, image | Video | 1280 by 720 pixels at 24 frames per second | Reached end-of-life September 30, 2026 |
| Nova Sonic (first generation) | Speech | Speech and text | Eight-minute connection limit by default | Reached end-of-life September 14, 2026; Nova 2 Sonic is the current model |
The second generation is shorter. The Nova 2 guide lists Nova 2 Lite, Nova 2 Sonic, and Nova Multimodal Embeddings, says all support up to one million tokens of context, and says a single response can reach 65,536 tokens. Web grounding and a code interpreter come built in. The December 2, 2025 AWS post for Nova 2 Lite named Nova 2 Omni as a model in preview at that time, and the guide checked in October 2026 does not list it.
The lifecycle page explains the gaps. It places Nova Canvas and Nova Reel (legacy since March 30, 2026) at end-of-life on September 30, 2026, and the first Nova Sonic (legacy since March 13, 2026) on September 14, 2026. Requests to those model IDs now fail. News coverage reported in late July 2026, and other outlets repeated, that Amazon is winding down Premier, Omni, Reel, and Canvas and moving effort to a single frontier model. Amazon's spokesperson said AI models remain one of the most important things the company is working on. The AWS lifecycle page lists no end-of-life date for Premier, Micro, Lite, or Pro, so what happens to them is not yet documented by AWS.
What AWS says happens to the data
The Bedrock FAQ states that customer content is not used to improve base models and is not shared with model providers, and that Bedrock inputs and outputs are not used to train Amazon Nova, Titan, or third-party models. It also says content is stored at rest in the Region where Bedrock is used and is encrypted in transit and at rest. The Bedrock data protection page adds that each model provider has a deployment account in every Region, operated by the Bedrock team, so providers have no access to prompts and completions.
Retention is configurable. The Bedrock data retention page describes account-level settings that include a zero-retention mode, and it says some models require retention for safety review, in which case a request to such a model is blocked under a zero-retention setting. These terms apply to Bedrock. AWS's own disclosure to Stanford says that on the consumer chat site, interactions are recorded and retained and may be used to improve services, including AI models. Anyone comparing the two should read the terms of the specific entry point.
Where availability is limited
Regions differ by model. The version 1 guide lists Nova Premier directly in US East (N. Virginia) and AWS GovCloud (US-West), and Nova Pro, Lite, and Micro in US East (N. Virginia), Asia Pacific (Sydney), Europe (London), and GovCloud. Canvas and Reel appear in the same guide for US East, Europe (Ireland), and Asia Pacific (Tokyo), but they are now retired. Cross-region inference lets a request run in other Regions, and AWS notes that retained data then sits in the Region where the request is processed. For organizations with data residency duties, such as Canadian public bodies, the Regional availability page for the chosen model is the document to read, and it should be checked again before each deployment because the lists change.
What is not disclosed
The Stanford Center for Research on Foundation Models scored company transparency in its December 2025 Foundation Model Transparency Index, which covered 13 companies. Amazon's report assessed Nova Premier. In the indicators shown, the report credits Amazon for describing data acquisition methods, training stages, compute provider, and distribution channels, and marks parameter counts, training compute, energy use, and the top sources of training data as undisclosed. Model weights are not released. These gaps are common to closed models, and they mean performance claims depend on benchmarks that AWS and outside testers publish.
Checks before relying on an Amazon AI claim
- Identify the entry point: Bedrock API, consumer chat, or a product such as a voice assistant that runs on Bedrock models.
- Confirm the model name and version string, since Nova, Nova 2, and Premier differ in context and features.
- Check the lifecycle state on the Bedrock model lifecycle page, because several Nova models changed status in 2026.
- Read the data terms for that entry point, not the general Amazon privacy page.
- Look up the Regions that serve the model and whether cross-region inference is on.
- Take prices from the current Bedrock pricing page on the day of purchase, because the rates are per token and AWS also offers batch and other tiers.
FAQ
Is Amazon Nova the same as Alexa?
No. Nova is a family of models sold through Bedrock. Alexa is a separate consumer voice assistant with its own product terms, so a statement about one does not carry over to the other.
Does Bedrock train on a company's prompts?
AWS says no for Bedrock inputs and outputs, and it applies that statement to Nova, Titan, and third-party models. The statement covers Bedrock only, and the consumer Nova site has separate terms.
Are all Nova models still available?
No. AWS lists Nova Canvas, Nova Reel, and the first Nova Sonic as end-of-life in September 2026. Premier, Pro, Lite, and Micro carry no end-of-life date on the lifecycle page checked on October 27, 2026, although Premier is reported to be winding down.
Are Nova models open source?
No. The Stanford report notes that Nova weights are not released, and the models are reached only through AWS services.
Is Nova available in Canada?
That depends on the model and the AWS Region, including whether cross-region inference is allowed. The AWS regional availability tables are the authoritative list, and they change as models are added.
Related reading
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- Datasets used to train AI systems
- Creative AI examples and image generators
More in AI Tools and Industry.
Last verified: October 2026
Sources
- What is Amazon Nova? (version 1 user guide), Amazon Web Services documentation, 2026
- Amazon Bedrock FAQs, Amazon Web Services, 2026
- Introducing Amazon Nova, AWS News Blog, December 3, 2024
- Introducing Amazon Nova 2 Lite, AWS News Blog, December 2, 2025
- What is Amazon Nova 2? and What's new in Amazon Nova 2, AWS documentation, 2026
- Amazon Bedrock is now generally available, AWS What's New, September 28, 2023
- Model lifecycle (Legacy), Amazon Bedrock User Guide, AWS documentation, 2026
- Amazon winds down most of its Nova AI models, The Next Web, July 30, 2026, citing news reports
- Data protection and Data retention, Amazon Bedrock User Guide, AWS documentation, 2026
- Foundation Model Transparency Index, December 2025, and Amazon company report, Stanford Center for Research on Foundation Models