Like its competitors like Google Lens and Pinterest Lens, Amazon is investing more in AI-powered shopping experiences, a new AI-powered upgrade to Amazon Lens shopping capabilities that allow consumers to discover new products through visual search. The tool will also integrate product insights with Amazon’s AI shopping assistant Rufus, the retailer said.
Lens Live does not replace Amazon Lens, Amazon’s existing visual search tool. This prevents you from taking images, uploading images, scanning barcodes to discover products. Instead, it brings real-time components to Amazon lenses, so you can point your phone at what you’re seeing in the real world and see the matching product in the sliced carousel at the bottom of the screen.
This addition is one of several ways Amazon is leveraging AI to help online shoppers. Over the past year or so, the company has also rolled out other features such as AI assistant Rufus, AI-powered shopping guides, AI-enhanced product reviews, AI tools for finding the right clothing, AI audio products summaries, personalized shopping prompts, and tools for merchants.
Lens Live utilizes activities that customers already do. Compare Shopping in real-world retailers to see if Amazon is trading better on the same or similar items.
When using the new Lens Live feature, customers can tap on any item in the camera view to trigger the feature and focus on that product. If you find a match you like, you can either tap the (+) plus icon to add it to your shopping cart, or tap the heart icon to save it to your wish list.
This feature is equipped with Amazon Sagemaker Services, which allows machine learning models to be deployed at scale. Runs on Amazon OpenSearch managed by AWS.
Additionally, Amazon’s AI-powered shopping assistant Rufus is available in a new experience, allowing customers to see a summary of the AI-generated products and suggest conversational prompt questions that can be asked to learn more about the item. According to Amazon, this allows shoppers to conduct quick product research and see product insights before making a purchase.
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The Lens Live feature was first released on the Amazon Shopping app on iOS. Initially, it was launched for “tens of millions” of US shoppers before being deployed to others in the US.
