Amazon Introduces New AI Shopping Assistant Tool

Amazon has recently unveiled a new tool called Interests, which utilizes artificial intelligence to enhance the shopping experience for its users. This AI-powered shopping assistant allows customers to explore and shop for products using simple, everyday language.

With the Interests tool, shoppers can create customized prompts based on their personal tastes and budget. They can express what they are looking for in their own words. For instance, someone might input a request for “model building kits and accessories for hobbyist engineers and designers,” or they can seek “brewing tools and gadgets for coffee lovers” or even “the latest pickleball gear and accessories.”

Once a user formulates their prompt, Interests will automatically browse Amazon's extensive inventory and recommend relevant products that match the search criteria. This includes new arrivals, restocked items, and various deals tailored to the user's shopping request.

Amazon explains that Interests employs large language models to transform casual language into structured queries and attributes. This allows traditional search engines to process them more efficiently, leading to better product recommendations. For example, if a user searches for “natural makeup products for summer glow from top brands,” the Interests tool will be able to understand what “top brands” refers to in the context of makeup and provide recommendations accordingly.

Currently, the Interests feature is available to a select group of users in the United States, accessible through both Amazon's app and mobile website. As of now, there is no confirmation regarding the future availability of the feature in Australia.

In a similar vein, Google is also incorporating AI into its shopping and search platforms. The company reports that users engage in online shopping over a billion times a day. To streamline the shopping process, Google is enhancing its AI models and machine learning technologies. They have recently introduced a feature on their Search and Shopping tabs called ‘vision match.’ This feature lets users describe a clothing item they have in mind and uses AI image generation to present ideas of what that garment could look like, along with similar shoppable products.

Amazon, AI, Shopping