# Winning at AWS DNA 6th: Gen AI in AWS's Innovation Program

### Introduction
- `AWS DNA`(**AWS Digital Native Architects**) is a training and networking program by **AWS Korea**, designed to provide a systematic experience in solving business challenges using **AWS** services.
- Each cohort carefully selects participating companies for a rigorous program consisting of 4 weeks of education, 2 weeks of **Pre-POC MVP** development, and a final presentation.
- Starting with the first cohort in 2020, I participated in the 6th cohort focused on **Gen AI** as a representative of `Gentle Monster`, and our team won the `Customer Obsession` award at the final presentation.

### Motivation for Participation
- As a new member of **Gentle Monster**'s Technology Strategy Team this year, I was working on **Gen AI**-related projects when I learned about the **AWS DNA** program during an AWS **Gen AI** Immersion Day session.
- Our company's **AWS** Solutions Architect, Seungwon Choi, introduced the program, and after expressing interest, our entire team was selected to participate.

### Schedule
- The AWS DNA 6th cohort followed this schedule:
  - 2024-05-29: Understanding **Gen AI** concepts and project conceptualization
  - 2024-06-05: **Gen AI** theory and practical sessions based on AWS
  - 2024-06-12: Bedrock with RAG techniques, use cases, Knowledge Base introduction, and Bedrock with Agent utilization
  - 2024-06-19: Bedrock Advanced architecture, Bedrock Production application tips: Bedrock Security, Cost Optimization
  - 2024-06-26: Team Pre-PoC development and office hours
  - 2024-07-03: Team result presentations and awards ceremony

### Participating Companies
- Team 1: Kakao-A (Infrastructure Technology Organization)
- Team 2: Kakao-B (AI Platform Team)
- Team 3: Ground X
- Team 4: Woowa Brothers-A (Recommendation Service Team)
- Team 5: Woowa Brothers-B (Delivery Time Prediction Service Team)
- Team 6: Interpark Triple
- Team 7: Great Imagination
- Team 8: Midas IT
- Team 9: I'mweb
- Team 10: Kurly
- Team 11: Refine
- Team 12: **Gentle Monster**
- Team 13: Hyundai Card

### Our Project
- As a global high-end fashion brand, **Gentle Monster** is renowned for its unique offline customer experiences. We identified a need to provide an equally exceptional online experience.
- We developed a **Gen AI**-based product recommendation search engine and chatbot to demonstrate this capability.
- Using Amazon's Working Backwards approach, we defined a virtual loyal **Gentle Monster** customer and started with a press release to validate our project idea.
- We created a service that recommends optimal products based on customers' natural language queries, utilizing LLM prompt engineering and RAG techniques.
- We leveraged **Amazon Bedrock Claude 3.5 Sonnet**, **Amazon Bedrock TitanText Embedding v2**, **Amazon SageMaker**, and **Amazon OpenSearch**.
- Through this 6-week process, we developed a service that allows customers to receive quick recommendations through natural language and image queries, showcasing the power of **Gen AI** integration.

### Final Presentation Photos

![](https://img1.daumcdn.net/thumb/R1280x0/?scode=mtistory2&fname=https%3A%2F%2Fblog.kakaocdn.net%2Fdn%2FFle4z%2FbtsIyty4NAv%2Fq2Bfgspf1OgM7ngKHLecI1%2Fimg.jpg)
![](https://img1.daumcdn.net/thumb/R1280x0/?scode=mtistory2&fname=https%3A%2F%2Fblog.kakaocdn.net%2Fdn%2FHljSL%2FbtsIygzMRep%2FDly8S9vzHPjny6jEJ7zrSk%2Fimg.jpg)
![](https://img1.daumcdn.net/thumb/R1280x0/?scode=mtistory2&fname=https%3A%2F%2Fblog.kakaocdn.net%2Fdn%2FOmZgH%2FbtsIybSL2Lb%2F3qNNaQ6AL6x0RsKByyeIcK%2Fimg.jpg)

### Reflections

- Winning the Customer Obsession award was a proud and joyful moment, especially invigorating for a 15-year veteran engineer like myself.
- Despite initial reservations about the 6-week commitment, the program provided a compressed, high-level **Gen AI** learning experience equivalent to what might have taken 6 months otherwise.
- AWS's technical support was excellent, and the engineer-to-engineer interactions during the program were particularly valuable.
- We were the only team to use Kotlin for our Pre-POC project, aiming for production-level implementation from the start. We even made feature requests to LangChain4j for necessary functionalities.
- The program offered insights into how other prominent companies are addressing challenges with **Gen AI**, providing a broader perspective and networking opportunities.
- Special thanks to our Technology Strategy Team, our CTO, and the **AWS Korea** team, including Program Managers Youngjoo Yoon and Jihye Shin, and SA Seungwon Choi, for their support and efforts in making this an exceptional experience.