Amazon debuts Lens Live, an AI-powered tool for real-world shopping

Amazon

Amazon has launched Lens Live, a new AI-powered addition to its shopping experience that lets customers discover products in real time using their phone’s camera. Similar to Google Lens and Pinterest Lens, the feature allows users to point their camera at an item in the real world and instantly see matching products in a swipeable carousel at the bottom of the screen.

Unlike Amazon Lens, which already lets shoppers upload images, snap pictures, or scan barcodes to find products, Lens Live brings a live visual search element. It is designed to integrate with Amazon’s AI assistant, Rufus, which provides product insights, summaries, and conversational prompts for quick research.

The company has been steadily investing in AI to improve its e-commerce platform. Over the past year, Amazon has introduced AI-powered shopping guides, personalised prompts, enhanced product reviews, audio summaries, and tools for merchants. Lens Live builds on this by tapping into a common habit among shoppers: checking prices in physical stores to see if Amazon offers a better deal.

With Lens Live, customers can tap on an item in their camera view to focus on it. Matching products can then be added directly to the cart with the plus icon or saved to a wish list with the heart icon. The feature is powered by Amazon SageMaker and runs on AWS-managed OpenSearch, enabling machine learning models to work at scale.

Rufus, Amazon’s AI shopping assistant, is integrated into the experience to provide instant product summaries and answer questions, helping customers make more informed decisions before purchase.

Lens Live is initially available on the Amazon Shopping app for iOS, launching to tens of millions of shoppers in the United States. Amazon has not confirmed whether it will expand the feature to other global markets.