Amazon is doubling down on AI-enhanced shopping experiences with Tuesday’s launch of Lens Live—a new artificial intelligence-powered upgrade to its existing Amazon Lens feature. Designed to let consumers discover products via visual search, Lens Live joins competitors like Google Lens and Pinterest Lens in the visual shopping space. The retail giant also notes that the tool will integrate with Rufus, Amazon’s AI shopping assistant, to deliver detailed product insights.
Crucially, Lens Live will not replace Amazon Lens, the platform’s current visual search tool that enables users to snap photos, upload images, or scan barcodes to find related products. Instead, it adds a real-time functionality to Amazon Lens: users can now point their smartphone cameras at items they encounter in the physical world, and matching products will appear in a swipeable carousel at the bottom of their screen.
This new tool is part of Amazon’s broader push to use AI to elevate the online shopping experience. Over the past 12 months or so, the company has rolled out a suite of AI-powered features, including the Rufus assistant, AI-generated shopping guides, enhanced product reviews with AI analysis, tools to find perfectly fitting clothing, audio summaries of products (powered by AI), personalized shopping prompts, and specialized tools for merchants.
Lens Live also taps into a behavior many customers already practice: comparing prices while browsing brick-and-mortar stores to check if Amazon offers a better deal on the same or similar items.
Image Credits: Amazon
Using Lens Live is straightforward: customers can tap on any item within their camera view to prompt the tool to focus on that specific product. If they find a matching item they want to purchase, they can add it to their shopping cart with a tap of the (+) plus icon, or save it to their wish list by clicking the heart icon.
Technologically, Lens Live is supported by Amazon SageMaker—a service that enables the large-scale deployment of machine learning models. It also operates on Amazon OpenSearch, a search service managed by AWS.
Additionally, Rufus, Amazon’s AI shopping assistant, is integrated into the Lens Live experience. This allows users to access AI-created product summaries, as well as suggested questions and conversational prompts that help them learn more about an item. According to Amazon, this feature lets shoppers conduct quick product research and review key insights before deciding to buy.
Lens Live is launching first on the Amazon Shopping app for iOS, with an initial rollout to “tens of millions” of shoppers in the United States. The company has not yet announced plans to expand the tool to other global markets.