Get the AMI id of the latest official Debian/Fedora/Ubuntu images (hvm-x86_64-gp2) | awscli

latest-ami.sh

# Debian 10
aws ec2 describe-images \
      --region us-east-1 \
      --owners 136693071363 \
      --filters 'Name=name,Values=debian-10-amd64-*' \
      --query 'sort_by(Images, &CreationDate)[-1].[ImageId,Name,CreationDate]' \
      --output text
      
##
# additional filters:
#  'Name=name,Values=debian-stretch-*'
#  'Name=architecture,Values=x86_64'
#  'Name=virtualization-type,Values=hvm'
# 

# Debian 9 (old owner)
aws ec2 describe-images \
      --region us-east-1 \
      --owners 379101102735 \
      --filters 'Name=name,Values=debian-stretch-hvm-x86_64-gp2-*' \
      --query 'sort_by(Images, &CreationDate)[-1].[ImageId,Name,CreationDate]' \
      --output text

# Ubuntu:
aws ec2 describe-images \
      --region us-east-1 \
      --owners 099720109477 \
      --filters 'Name=name,Values=ubuntu/images/hvm-ssd/ubuntu-bionic-18.04-amd64-server-*' \
      --query 'sort_by(Images, &CreationDate)[-1].[ImageId,Name,CreationDate]' \
      --output text


# Fedora
aws ec2 describe-images \
      --region us-east-1 \
      --owners 125523088429 \
      --filters 'Name=name,Values=Fedora-Cloud-Base-30-*x86_64-hvm-*-gp2-*' \
      --query 'sort_by(Images, &CreationDate)[-1].[ImageId,Name,CreationDate]' \
      --output text

I think credentials are required for these accounts, otherwise you'd get an error

for which accounts? those are public images.

for aws ec2 api calls you do need basic aws credentials, true.