Amazon Wants AI to Decide What You Buy

AI slop: Coming soon to a doorstep near you

The tentacles of AI hype have already wriggled their way into Hollywood studios, record labels, newsrooms, kitchens, and maybe even the caverns of your mind. Amazon believes your shopping cart is next. The retail giant is apparently laying the groundwork for AI-initiated purchases, starting with automatically generated buying guides; they’re out today for around 100 kinds of products, including TVs, dog food, shoes, and face creams. Amazon says the guides already point out specific features, use cases, brands, and answers to common questions. They’re currently exclusive to smartphones, and they sound a whole lot like an automated alternative to Wirecutter, but without the affiliate links and the sense that a human actually waded through the muck to find the best thing. Amazon’s intention with these AI-generated guides, according to the company’s head of personalization Daniel Lloyd, is to “reduce the time spent researching before you make a purchase.” Amazon really wants to chip away at this, though Lloyd acknowledged that “it’s still early days.” The new guides, along with Amazon’s shopping chatbot, Rufus, are precursors to more sophisticated shopping agents that could simply plop items directly into your cart and effectively click buy, Amazon AI executive Trishul Chilimbi told Wired. More sophisticated agents are part of the company’s “roadmap,” Chilimbi reportedly said, informed by the heaps of shopping data Amazon already collects. “We’re working on it, prototyping it, and when we think it’s good enough, we’ll release it in whatever form makes sense,” he added. The path to such agents may start with chatbots that proactively ping you with product recommendations and ads, according to Chilimbi, but Amazon also says it’s planning for a future where you might just give it a prompt and a budget, and automate the research, browsing, and check-out process altogether. Tech giants have raced to pack AI features into their products over the past several years, and in some cases, their efforts have driven down the value of human labor while at least momentarily supercharging valuations. The AI bubble has also spawned plenty of as-of-yet unfulfilled promises, including the loosely defined specter of artificial general intelligence. While the AI bubble may actually be deflating, Amazon certainly knows how to wield a tech prediction to boost sales, as it did with drone delivery hype during the 2013 holiday shopping season. Now, Amazon seems to have done it again, drawing the eyes of skeptics and shoppers alike towards a (sigh) mountain of deals.
AiAmazonPrime Day
Get the best tech, science, and culture news in your inbox daily.

News from the future, delivered to your present.

Please select your desired newsletters and submit your email to upgrade your inbox.

The world’s largest publishing house doesn’t want its copyrighted work used to train AI models.

The Treasury says it identified or recovered $4 billion in fraudulent payments last fiscal year, a sixfold increase over the previous year.

You can now find multiple listings for prefabricated homes on Walmart for under $16,000, but you also need to remember that home ownership will never be cheap.

Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are all pushing for a nuclear-power fueled future. It’s a huge gamble.

The new Colorsoft Kindle is available to order for $280.

These are all the Apple Intelligence features coming to iPhone on October 28.
Discover the Winners of the 2024 Gizmodo Science Fair ➜ We may earn a commission when you buy through links on our sites.
©2024 GIZMODO USA LLC. All rights reserved. Mode
Follow us
Mode
Follow us

https://gizmodo.com/amazon-wants-ai-to-decide-what-you-buy-2000509872