It’s a big moment for Amazon. The online retail giant’s misnamed Prime Day, which actually stretches across half a week and ends June 26, is in full swing, with blockbuster discounts on a vast swathe of products.
But rather than leaving shoppers to click, compare, and hunt for deals on their own, Amazon is pushing its AI tools hard. Videos touting the ability to integrate Alexa, or Rufus, Amazon’s AI text chatbot, into the shopping experience are a new addition this year.
It’s a sign of how the company sees the future of online retail, and the strategy is backed up by broader consumer trends. More than half of U.S. shoppers are now willing to let AI handle the entire shopping process, including the final purchase, once their preferences are set, according to payments platform Adyen.
Early signs suggest that Amazon’s use of AI, and shoppers’ own use of AI, has been effective. Adobe, which tracks online shopping behavior during Prime Day and other events, says traffic from AI sources has converted into sales 50.7% better than traffic from non-AI sources. Shoppers who arrived at Amazon from AI sources also spent nearly half as long on the site as other visitors.
But when it comes to concrete evidence of success within Amazon’s own tools, the picture is murkier. Experts say that may come down to the unpredictable habits of shoppers.
There’s a gap between how Amazon imagines its AI tools being used and how bargain-hunting shoppers are actually using them, says Julian Skelly, managing partner for retail at Publicis Sapient. For now, he says, many shoppers are turning to tools like Rufus mainly to verify whether a discount is real. That may be helpful, but it falls short of Amazon’s larger ambition. “They want it to be a shopping companion,” he says, “rather than what is at the moment, which is more of a fact-checker.”
The split between Amazon’s intended use case and shoppers’ actual behavior is partly a function of timing. The technology is still new, and consumer habits can take time to shift. But Skelly says Amazon’s tools also have limitations. Shoppers want an AI assistant that can offer genuinely tailored recommendations based on their individual interests. “That needs much richer data about the person asking,” he says. “Most of these tools are working from fairly shallow signals at the moment.” And that may change as adoption grows.
Of course, where Amazon leads, other retailers are likely to follow. That means the shopping experience could change significantly, both for consumers and for the companies selling to them. AI agents do not shop the way humans do. A person looking at a product page may respond to images, layout, and polish, Skelly says. An AI agent, by contrast, needs structured information. Today’s product pages might include a dozen or so key details, but an agent may need far more data to make a useful recommendation.
That shift would also change how shoppers move through online stores in the first place. Ella Kersey, growth lead at the digital consumer experience agency Brandwidth, says tools like Rufus and Alexa are already making product discovery feel less like search and more like conversation. Rather than scrolling through pages of results, shoppers can increasingly ask a question and receive recommendations almost immediately. That speed can be useful for both consumers and Amazon—the latter of whom has every reason to shorten the path between interest and purchase.
For retailers, collapsing the time between considering a purchase and making one is valuable. But AI could also make shoppers more discerning, and possibly reduce one of online retail’s biggest headaches: returns. “Ultimately, Amazon’s AI is both helping consumers buy more efficiently while also encouraging them to scrutinize what they buy,” says David Jennison, managing director for Europe at the ecommerce accelerator Pattern.