Amazon is launching a new experiment which gives ranked products and recruits its own panel of reviewers.
The e-commerce corporation is introducing AI-generated audio summaries for a handful of product listings on the site in hopes of offering a fast, easy-to-digest way for customers to get a sense of product details.
This new feature, tested with a small number of users in the US, uses a combination of product information, customer reviews and web search to train its language model, and produce brief audio summaries of an item. Available via a “Hear the highlights” button in the Amazon shopping app—they’re read by what the company admits are “AI-powered shopping experts.”
The idea is to give shoppers a quick way to understand the most important parts of a product without needing to sift through paragraphs of copy and tons of reviews.
According to Amazon, the audio summaries work especially well with products you might take extra time to consider before the buy button is clicked.
The AI reads through enormous bodies of text and pull out the most important information to present it in an easy-to-consume audio format.
This makes the research process smoother and more user-friendly because users can multitask or obtain findings very efficiently while on the move.
This announcement is the latest in Amazon’s larger push to get AI embedded deep into their system. The company has more recently added generative AI functionality to its Alexa voice assistant in the form of its Alexa+ product.
They have also launched other AI-enabled shopping features, such as Rufus, a generative AI assistant that responds to shopping questions, and Shopping Guides, which assist with product recommendations.
The entrance of AI-driven audio summaries into what is increasingly an arms race within tech to develop and implement AI solutions that can improve consumer experiences.
Amazon’s integration comes after other tech giants have done the same, and is part of a broader trend of using AI to streamline and enhance online shopping.
Although for now it’s just available on some products to U.S. costumers, Amazon says is planning to extend it across more products and a larger number of customers in future months.
This is an example of AI’s impact in e-commerce, providing new interfaces to show customers the product details they crave.