Amazon Opens Up Its Proprietary AI Shopping Technology to Third-Party Retailers

According to foreign media reports, Amazon has launched an AI technology licensing service for the retail industry. This service, built upon the foundational architecture and operational experience of Alexa for Shopping, allows participating retailers to deploy custom AI shopping tools tailored to their own stores, product catalogs, and brand identity in as little as 60 days.

This move follows Amazon's established playbook of transforming internally developed technologies into external services. Two decades ago, Amazon took a similar path by launching its cloud computing business, AWS, and has since gradually opened up other internal technologies such as cashier-less checkout and supply chain solutions to external clients.

In early May, Amazon upgraded its original e-commerce chatbot, Rufus, to Alexa for Shopping, integrating it by default into the platform's on-site search functionality. The newly licensed AI shopping technology service is offered by the AWS division, which is designed to alleviate partner retailers' concerns regarding data sharing.

Currently, the luxury fashion brand Kate Spade, owned by Tapestry, has become one of the first customers of Amazon's AI technology, using the service to launch a gifting assistant feature. Several other retailers are in the testing phase.

At present, leading players in the global AI industry are all making moves in the shopping scenario. OpenAI, Google, and Perplexity have all launched shopping-focused research tools and intelligent agents, though some projects have faced hurdles due to technical flaws and difficulties in retailer integration. Consumer acceptance of fully delegating the purchase process to AI remains unclear. Major retail platforms like Walmart, Target, Etsy, Gap, and eBay are adopting a dual-track strategy, simultaneously developing their own AI shopping tools while collaborating with companies like OpenAI and Google. Software vendors such as Salesforce have also launched corresponding services to help retailers build on-site chatbots or intelligent agents.

Amazon has previously not partnered with other AI platforms, focusing instead on developing internal tools like Alexa for Shopping. It also prohibits external agents from scraping data from its site and has introduced a 'Buy for Me' feature that can place orders for users on other retail websites.

In a recent blog post, Amazon mentioned that retailers possess deep, vertical knowledge of their products, customers, and categories that general-purpose AI cannot match, suggesting that retailers build their own AI tools rather than ceding control of the shopping experience to third-party intermediaries.