AI in Action: Common Generative AI Use Cases
From Lab to Boardroom. Explore the high-impact use cases where GenAI is creating real business value today.
Solving the Productivity Puzzle
Generative AI is not just for "Asking funny questions." It is a specialized tool for Knowledge Work. For the AWS Certified AI Practitioner exam, you must be able to categorize GenAI use cases into distinct "Buckets" of value.
AWS generally organizes GenAI use cases into four main pillars.
1. Pillar 1: Content Generation (The "Creator")
This is the most obvious use case. GenAI acts as a "First Draft" machine.
- Marketing: Generating 100 variations of an ad copy or a social media post.
- Email/Report Writing: Turning bullet points into a professional, polite response.
- Coding: Using Amazon Q Developer to write boilerplate code or unit tests.
- Product Design: Creating 2D concept art for a new shoe or a piece of furniture.
2. Pillar 2: Knowledge Extraction (The "Librarian")
This is where GenAI solves the problem of "Information Overload."
- Summarization: Taking a 50-page legal contract and turning it into a 1-page summary of risks.
- Search (RAG): Asking a question like "What is our company policy on remote work?" and having the AI read 1,000 PDF manuals to find the exact paragraph.
- Translation: Translating technical documents while maintaining the correct "tone" and industry terminology.
3. Pillar 3: Customer Experience (The "Assistant")
GenAI transforms how customers interact with brands.
- Intelligent Chatbots: Moving beyond "Press 1 for Sales" to a bot that can actually explain why an invoice is different this month.
- Personalization: Recommending a product not just based on "What others bought," but by writing a custom reason: "Based on your interest in hiking, this waterproof jacket is perfect for the rainy weather in Seattle next week."
4. Pillar 4: Operational Efficiency (The "Optimizer")
Using AI to fix internal company "Grit."
- Synthetic Data Generation: Creating "fake" but realistic medical records to train a model without violating patient privacy (HIPAA).
- Meeting Transcription & Action Items: Using a bot to listen to a Zoom call and automatically email everyone their "To-Do" list.
Visualizing Use Case ROI
| Use Case | Time Saved | Complexity | AWS Service |
|---|---|---|---|
| Email Drafting | 50% | Low | Bedrock (Claude) |
| Code Completion | 30% | Medium | Amazon Q |
| Document Search | 90% | High (Needs RAG) | Bedrock + Kendra |
| Image Creation | 95% | Low | Bedrock (Titan) |
5. Summary: The "Employee" Mental Model
When thinking about GenAI use cases, treat the AI as a highly intelligent intern.
- They are great at reading and writing.
- They are bad at "Knowing facts" (without a search tool).
- They need a human to check their work.
If a task fits that description, it is a perfect Generative AI Use Case.
Exercise: Categorize the Value
A law firm wants to use AI to compare two versions of a contract and highlight any "aggressive" changes in the language. Which pillar does this belong to?
- A. Content Generation.
- B. Knowledge Extraction.
- C. Customer Experience.
- D. Operational Efficiency.
The Answer is B! You are "extracting" meaning and differences from existing knowledge documents.
Knowledge Check
?Knowledge Check
A company wants to summarize 1,000 customer emails and extract the main sentiment of each. Which GenAI pattern is this?
What's Next?
It sounds too good to be true, right? It is. If you use GenAI blindly, you will get into trouble. Find out the "Gaps" in our final lesson of the module: Lesson 5: Limitations of Generative AI.