Amazon brings AI shopping assistant to retailers with Kate Spade

Amazon is offering its AI shopping technology to other retailers through a new Agentic Shopping Assistant built on AWS, with Kate Spade among the first brands to use it.

The service allows retailers to build AI shopping assistants for their own websites and apps. Amazon said each deployment can be customised to a retailer’s catalogue, customer base, shopping environment, and brand voice.

The service is based on technology first developed for Amazon’s own online store. Now, it’s packaging architecture, starter code, and lessons from Alexa for Shopping for use by other retailers.

More than 300 million customers used Amazon’s AI shopping assistant last year, according to the company, the assistant generating nearly US$12 billion in incremental sales in the same period.

Amazon said the service lets retailers deploy conversational agents “in weeks,” rather than the years building from scratch might take.

The offering includes architecture guidance, starter code, and help from AWS experts and system integrator partners.

Kate Spade uses AI for gift shopping

Kate Spade, owned by Tapestry, is one of the first brands to use the technology, introducing an AI Gift Concierge that helps shoppers find gift options through a conversational interface. The assistant is focused on gift-buying, with Amazon citing its own data that reveals 53% of shoppers “report stress” during gift purchases.

The assistant can recommend gifts based on occasion and customer inputs. Fabio Luzzi, Tapestry’s chief data and analytics officer, told Digital Commerce 360 that the tool came from listening to consumers and identifying what they needed when shopping for gifts.

Tapestry tested the assistant for about two and a half months before making it available to consumers, according to Amazon’s announcement.

AWS services behind the assistant

The system uses Amazon Bedrock, AgentCore, and OpenSearch. Bedrock is the basis for generative AI applications, AgentCore operates AI agents, and OpenSearch is for search and retrieval.

Amazon said conversational shopping sessions generate conversion rates 3.5 times higher than traditional keyword-based product searches.

The AWS launch follows Amazon’s rollout of Alexa for Shopping in the US in May. That allows users to type shopping-related questions into Amazon’s search bar and receive conversational answers. Under the hood, Alexa for Shopping brings together elements of Rufus and Alexa+ (Rufus was the AI shopping assistant Amazon launched in 2024).

(Photo by Shutter Speed)

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