Amazon’s cloud division announced an AI shopping assistant for retailers, following the company’s broader blueprint of turning its internal technology into products for others.
The new tool from Amazon Web Services, the AWS Agentic Shopping Assistant, is built on the same technology that powers the Alexa for Shopping assistant on Amazon.com, formerly known as Rufus, which the company says drove nearly $12 billion in incremental sales last year.
It’s designed to let retailers create AI assistants for their own e-commerce sites that can talk with shoppers, answer questions about products, and make recommendations tailored to each store’s inventory and brand. AWS says a retailer can get one up and running in about 60 days.
The announcement is the latest move in the broader competition among tech giants to control different pieces of the AI shopping experience.
- Google is building shopping features into its AI-powered search results, and has also partnered with Shopify on an open commerce standard to let AI agents interact with merchant checkout systems.
- Microsoft has added checkout tools to its Copilot assistant and has been working with retailers like Ralph Lauren on custom AI shopping experiences.
- OpenAI has been working with Shopify and Walmart to surface products in ChatGPT after its initial Instant Checkout feature fell flat.
- Walmart last year launched its own AI shopping assistant, nicknamed Sparky, and has since integrated it into ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, betting on being present across AI platforms.
With its new release, AWS is betting that retailers will want to build their own AI shopping experiences, while leveraging the experience of Amazon’s own e-commerce platform.
The stakes are significant. Accenture estimates that by 2030, more than 30% of online commerce could run through AI agents, representing about $3.1 trillion in transactions.
Amazon’s pitch requires retailers to trust its cloud division with their AI shopping infrastructure, even as Amazon’s retail arm competes against them for customers. AWS says retailers using the AWS Agentic Shopping Assistant will keep control of their own customer data, product catalogs, and business rules, with each deployment customized to the retailer’s brand.
An early retail customer is Kate Spade, the fashion and accessories brand. Its parent company, Tapestry, used the tool to launch an AI gift concierge in April that engages shoppers in conversation about the occasion, recipient, and style before recommending products.
Amazon says the concierge was built on Anthropic’s Haiku 4.5 model through Amazon Bedrock, and went through roughly 2.5 months of testing before going live.
https://ift.tt/OM57j8e May 27, 2026 at 01:24PM GeekWire
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