Amazon is testing a new generative AI shopping assistant

While tech giants like Microsoft and Google have been announcing new AI- products left and right—chatbots and copilots!—Amazon has been fairly quiet when it comes to showcasing its own generative AI-driven consumer products.

But now we know that Amazon is testing a new feature, powered by generative AI, on its iOS and Android apps that can answer a user’s questions about a specific product in a natural-sounding way. Customers can ask questions like “Would this shirt fit someone who is five foot three inches?” or a more creative one like, “Can you make up a joke with this shirt?” and instantly receive a response that pulls from previous reviews and customer questions. The new rollout was first spotted by the market research firm Marketplace Pulse.

The feature, which not everyone has access to yet, can be found under the “Looking for specific info?” section on product pages.

Still, Amazon reviews are plagued by AI bots, so there remains the question of how the generative AI-driven summaries of the reviews will be able to distinguish between human and fake reviews. Amazon said in a statement to Quartz that more than 99% of products viewed in its stores contain only authentic reviews.

What else is Amazon doing with generative AI?

This is one of the more useful rollouts of generative AI. There’s a lot of hype around this new and evolving technology, but so far a lot of the use cases tend to be around summarizing information, as noted by leaders at Microsoft and OpenAI’s Sam Altman.

As it races to catch up with Google and Microsoft, Amazon—which has always touted a customer-obsessed philosophy—might be getting it right. A recent survey by KPMG, which polled over 1,000 adults between Dec. 8 and Dec. 15, found that consumers have the most trust in generative AI for education and personalized recommendations.

In November, Amazon launched Q, a business chatbot powered by generative AI, as a competitor to ChatGPT. The assistant can synthesize content, streamline day-to-day communications, and help employees with tasks like generating blog posts. It can also be connected to a company’s own systems and data for a more tailored experience.

Amazon, which is also the biggest cloud provider, has launched its own AI chips and has released Bedrock, which provides developers a platform for building generative AI applications on the AWS cloud service. In September 2023, the company also said it would invest up to $4 billion in Anthropic, a rival startup to OpenAI.