Amazon said on May 27 it will make the technology behind Alexa for Shopping available to retailers through Amazon Web Services.

The offering packages the underlying architecture, starter code, and lessons learned from Amazon’s consumer shopping assistant for use on retailers’ own ecommerce websites.

The new service, AWS Agentic Shopping Assistant, is built on the same technology as Alexa for Shopping on Amazon.com, formerly called Rufus.

Amazon said retailers can use it to launch assistants that answer product questions and make recommendations from their own catalogs, with one assistant up and running in about 60 days.

Amazon said Kate Spade, a US luxury fashion brand owned by Tapestry, used the service to launch a gifting assistant, and other retailers are testing it.

On Amazon’s own platforms, Alexa for Shopping combines Rufus and Alexa+ to support conversational product discovery, personalized recommendations, and reordering on Amazon’s shopping app and website.

AWS said retailers keep control of customer data, product catalogs, and business rules, a point that may matter because Amazon’s retail business competes with many merchants.

The launch adds to a wider race in AI shopping involving Google, OpenAI, and Perplexity.

🔗 Source: Amazon

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