AI Coding Agent Causes Major AWS Outage at Amazon

The incidents, which occurred in December 2025, have sparked debates about the balance between AI autonomy and human oversight in production environments.

Amazon Jeff Bezos Reuters 1200x768

The most notable disruption lasted 13 hours and primarily impacted a customer-facing service in parts of mainland China. According to reports, AWS engineers tasked the Kiro AI coding tool with resolving a minor software issue. Kiro, an agentic AI designed to autonomously handle coding and operational tasks, decided the optimal solution was to delete and recreate the entire environment. This action led to an unexpected chain reaction, causing the prolonged outage.

Amazon has emphasized that the problems stemmed from user error rather than flaws in the AI itself. In an official statement, the company noted that the incidents resulted from misconfigured access controls, allowing the AI to operate with permissions equivalent to a human engineer without requiring secondary approval.

"In both instances, this was user error, not AI error," Amazon stated, adding that similar issues could arise from any developer tool or manual action.

This was not an isolated event. Sources familiar with the matter revealed at least two production outages linked to AI tools in recent months. A senior AWS employee told reporters, "We’ve already seen at least two production outages. The engineers let the AI resolve an issue without intervention. The outages were small but entirely foreseeable." The second incident involved Amazon Q Developer, another AI-powered chatbot for code assistance, which caused an internal service disruption.

Discussions on social platforms highlight growing concerns. One user noted, "Amazon's framing is convenient but misses the point. Yes, an engineer gave the AI too much access. But that's exactly the risk with agentic AI in production." Another post warned, "When AI runs infrastructure, mistakes scale fast." These reactions underscore the broader implications for relying on autonomous AI in high-stakes settings.

In response to the outages, Amazon has introduced new safeguards, including enhanced training and restrictions on AI tools to prevent similar occurrences. The events serve as a cautionary tale for the tech industry, where AI is increasingly integrated into core operations. As companies like Amazon push the boundaries of AI capabilities, ensuring robust controls will be crucial to maintaining reliability and trust.