Amazon offers mobile AI-based shopping aid
Amazon is providing artificial intelligence (AI)-based answers to customer questions on its shopping app.
In an email to Chain Store Age, Maria Boschetti, a spokesperson from Amazon, confirmed that the e-tailer is piloting a generative AI-based tool that helps customers obtain product information.
“Amazon has been using machine learning and AI for many years in virtually everything we do," Boschetti said in the email. "We’re constantly inventing to help make customers’ lives better and easier, and are currently testing a new feature powered by generative AI to improve shopping on Amazon by helping customers get answers to commonly asked product questions.”
According to Marketplace Pulse, the AI-based assistant is now available on Amazon’s Android and iOS shopping apps and accessible via the “Looking for specific info” option on product pages. The assistant reportedly analyzes product details and reviews with generative AI to create answers for natural-language customer questions.
The capability reportedly includes providing answers to questions such as whether an article of clothing is good for a specific activity, as well as perform activities like tell a joke related to a particular item, in any language.
However, the assistant will reportedly not perform tasks such as comparing products, recommending alternative or complementary purchases, or add an item to a customer shopping cart. Marketplace Pulse also reports the assistant can sometimes have “hallucinations,” such as having the wrong product information or declining to answer a routine question.
Amazon delves deeper into AI
Amazon is launching this mobile AI-based shopping assistant as its chief rival Walmart is making a new generative AI-based search function available to iOS users. The enhanced Walmart search experience allows customers to search by specific use cases, e.g., a football watch party versus individual searches for chips, wings, drinks and a 90-inch TV. It generates relevant, cross-category results.
[Read more: Study: AI will have a $580 billion impact on Amazon and Walmart]
However, Amazon has not been sitting idly when it comes to AI. The retailer recently rolled out a few AI-enabled features to assist fashion shoppers and sellers., such as personalized size recommendations. The e-tailer also recently unveiled a generative AI-based chatbox for employees to use at work, and is letting customers search by image and summarize product reviews with generative AI.
Generative AI is also a key component of the Amazon Just Walk Out frictionless shopping platform, and the retailer is actively involved in efforts to streamline its supply chain with AI-equipped robots.
In addition, Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud services platform of Amazon, offers a generative AI model called Bedrock, and is in a strategic collaboration with San Francisco-based generative AI developer Anthropic that includes investing up to $4 billion in the company and holding a minority ownership position.