Amazon offers AI shopping assistant on AWS; Kate Spade adopts

Amazon is making the shopping technology it uses on its own site available to other retailers through a new Agentic Shopping Assistant on Amazon Web Services. The package includes reference architecture, starter code and operational guidance so retailers can deploy a conversational shopping agent on their websites and apps.

Amazon said retailers can customize each deployment to their product catalogue, customer base, shopping environment and brand voice, and that AWS experts and system integrator partners can help retailers launch a working assistant in weeks rather than years.

Amazon reported more than 300 million customers used its AI shopping assistant last year, and that the tool produced nearly $12 billion in incremental sales during the same period. The company also reported conversational shopping sessions convert at about 3.5 times the rate of traditional keyword-based product searches.

Kate Spade is among the first brands to use the AWS offering. The label introduced an AI Gift Concierge that guides shoppers through a short conversation-asking about occasion and preferences-and then recommends items from the brand’s catalogue. Amazon said 53% of shoppers report stress when buying gifts.

Fabio Luzzi, chief data and analytics officer at the brand’s parent company, described the tool as the result of listening to customer feedback and said the company tested the concierge for roughly two and a half months before making it available to customers.

The assistant runs on AWS services including Amazon Bedrock for generative AI, AgentCore to operate AI agents, and OpenSearch for product search and retrieval. Amazon described the offering as including architecture guidance and starter code so retailers do not have to build the entire system from scratch.

Amazon declined to provide pricing for the packaged solution but said it will work with retailers to adapt assistants to specific catalogues and brand voice. The AWS service follows earlier Amazon initiatives such as Alexa for Shopping and prior in-house tools.