Amazon devices on display at the Amazon Devices Launch Event in New York City on February 26, 2025.
Brendan McDiarmid | Reuters
Amazon has used proprietary artificial intelligence technology to help users compare products and buy or reorder items on their behalf. The company is currently licensing the technology to other retailers, with the aim of making it the backbone of AI shopping on the web.
Amazon said in a blog post Wednesday that it is taking the “architecture, starter code, and learnings” from Alexa for Shopping and packaging it for the rest of the retail industry. Amazon says the new service will allow retailers to launch their own AI shopping tools tailored to their storefronts, catalogs, and branding “in as little as 60 days.”
The move marks a new push for Amazon to sell technology it builds internally as a service to other companies, including competitors. It’s an approach Amazon took nearly 20 years ago with its cloud computing division, Amazon Web Services, and later with its cashierless checkout, warehousing, and supply chain services.
Earlier this month, Amazon rebranded its e-commerce chatbot from Rufus to Alexa for Shopping and enabled it by default for store search queries. Outwardly, this new tool, provided by AWS, could help reassure retailers concerned about partnering with and sharing data with industry giants.
Amazon announced that it is already registered. tapestryThey used the service to launch a gift assistant, with high-end fashion brand Kate Spade as a client. The company said additional retailers are “currently being tested.”
Across the burgeoning AI industry, major companies are targeting shoppers. open AI, google Perplexity and Perplexity are rolling out research tools and agents for shopping, but some of those efforts have been stumbled by technical bugs and retailer onboarding issues. It’s also unclear whether shoppers are ready to hand over the task of completing their purchases to bots.
Retailers and marketplaces look like this: walmart, target, Etsy, gap and eBay is taking a multifaceted approach to AI shopping by building its own tools while partnering with OpenAI and Google. software companies like sales force It has been pitching a service that helps retailers set up chatbots and agents on their sites.
Amazon has been reluctant to partner with competing AI platforms, choosing instead to focus on building internal tools like Alexa for Shopping. It also isolates your site from scraping by external agents. Meanwhile, Amazon has built a feature called “Buy for Me” that allows users to make purchases on other retailers’ websites.
Amazon suggested in a post Wednesday that retailers build their own AI tools rather than relinquish control of the shopping experience to “middlemen.”
“Retailers already have deep vertical knowledge about their products, customers, and categories that general-purpose AI cannot match,” the company said.
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