Generative AI and machine learning is nothing new to Amazon.The e-commerce giant has been leveraging technology to personalise its customers’ shopping experience for decades now. However, as the rest of the retail industry is slowly catching up and incorporating Generative AI and machine learning into their online stores, Amazon is taking another leap forward and looking to further personalise recommendations, descriptions, and assistance in its store. “We’ve got teams who are goin
e going back to their traditional products and services, redoing them or enhancing them with AI, and getting lower cost and better quality out of them, which is great,” Doug Herrington, CEO of Worldwide Amazon Stores, said at Amazon’s Delivering the Future event in Nashville.
“And then what’s really exciting is that we’re also able to invent new experiences that we thought were like science fiction before, or that we had tried and failed miserably in the past – so there’s a whole bunch of customer-facing things that we’ve launched and got going,” Herrington added.
Here is a look at three areas where Amazon is enhancing its use of machine learning and Generative AI.
1. Shopping guides
Amazon’s shopping guides have long been a powerful discovery tool for customers but they are about to get personalised guides – the days of the “more like this” product edit are over.
Instead, Amazon’s AI shopping guides will blend educational content and customer insights to help shoppers make informed purchase decisions.
“Amazon’s new AI Shopping Guides help you reduce the time spent researching before you make a purchase by proactively consolidating key information you need alongside a relevant selection of products, making it easier to find the right product for your needs quickly and easily,” stated Daniel Lloyd, vice president of personalisation at Amazon.
This tailored approach to online shopping will help consumers navigate Amazon’s estimated 300 million products and curate a personalised virtual store.
“AI Shopping Guides are rolling out to all US customers across over 100 types of products, and we look forward to launching more product types in the weeks and months to come,” added Lloyd.
2. Product descriptions
With the power of generative AI and machine learning, Amazon has extended the personalised shopping experience to include product descriptions.
Using AI, Amazon will now be able to intelligently position keywords in a prominent position for consumers, including terms like “gluten-free”, “vegan”, “solar-powered”, “cruelty-free”, “long battery life” and “real leather” – even if the seller buried it at the bottom of a product description.
According to Amazon, it can individualise product descriptions for customers by analysing product attributes and customer shopping information, including preferences, search, browsing, and purchase history.
Then, it leverages a large language model (LLM) to edit a product title to highlight features that it believes are most valuable to the customer.
“If the primary LLM generates a product description that is too generic or fails to highlight key features unique to a specific customer, the evaluator LLM will flag the issue,” said Mihir Bhanot, director of personalisation at Amazon.
“This feedback loop allows the system to continuously refine suggestions, ensuring that customers see the most accurate and informative product descriptions possible,” Bhanot added.
3. AI assistant
Amazon introduced Rufus to its online customers this year, its new generative AI-powered conversational shopping assistant.
Rufus can help customers with broad-range and hyper-specific shopping questions based on Amazon’s database of product descriptions.
“Rufus is designed to help customers save time and make more informed purchase decisions by answering questions on a variety of shopping needs and products – it’s like having a shopping assistant with you any time you’re in our store,” stated Rajiv Mehta, vice president of search and conversational shopping at Amazon.
But Amazon’s AI assistance doesn’t stop with its customers, Amazon’s slowly rolling out Project Amelia – a new generative AI-powered personal assistant for sellers.
While Project Amelia is still in its beta phase, US sellers can employ Amelia anytime to ask knowledge-based questions, access status updates and metrics, and eventually find straightforward resolution paths to complex issues and tasks.
“It’s still early days, but we believe AI Shopping Guides – alongside our other AI-powered features, including Rufus, review highlights, fit review highlights, visual search, and AI-generated product information – will meaningfully improve how you learn about, explore, and discover the products you need and want,” concluded Lloyd.