Amazon is yet another competitor set to enter the chatbot arena, following in the footsteps of Google, by developing an AI-powered search experience. Recently, Bloomberg released a report revealing that the company is working on an “interactive conversational experience” for Amazon Search. It is designed to assist users in finding product information, comparing options, and receiving personalized recommendations.
“We are reimagining Amazon Search with an interactive conversational experience that helps you find answers to product questions, perform product comparisons, receive personalized product suggestions, and so much more, to easily find the perfect product for your needs. We’re looking for the best and brightest across Amazon to help us realize and deliver this vision to our customers right away,” reads Amazon’s job listing for a senior Applied Scientist, Amazon Search.
Describing these enhancements as a “once in a generation transformation for Search,” Amazon says that these changes will have the same kind of massive impact as that of the Mosaic browser had on simplifying Internet usage three decades ago.
“This will be a once-in-a-generation transformation for Search, just like the Mosaic browser made the Internet easier to engage with three decades ago,” says Amazon. “If you missed the 90s—WWW, Mosaic, and the founding of Amazon and Google—you don’t want to miss this opportunity.”
Amazon seems to be racing here but understandably so. A chatbot can be a useful starting point when a customer is looking to buy something with specific parameters. Amazon certainly cannot stand to lose any ground in shopping, with competitors producing shopping guides in a single search on the new and improved search engine. So it is not surprising that the company wants to introduce its chatbot very soon.
In a late April investor call discussing the company’s first-quarter earnings, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said that while there is much forward-looking discussion about investments in AI and machine learning, Amazon has “a pretty substantial investment in machine learning for 25-plus years in Amazon. It’s deeply ingrained in virtually everything we do.”
That said, it is unclear when this new experience from Amazon might be released or what it might look like. When asked for comment, Amazon spokesperson Keri Bertolino only shared this: “We are significantly investing in generative AI across all of our businesses.” Assessing the current AI chatbot scenario, users are not overly anticipating much from other AI bot providers, ChatGPT seems to be ruling supreme throughout.
While there are still few details known about Amazon’s AI project, the job postings suggest that the company is actively seeking engineers to contribute to this AI-centric project. Amazon’s step into the competition comes soon after Google announces a similar initiative called “Search Generative Experience” (SGE) at the Google I/O 2023 conference. This SGE incorporates generative AI features into the Search, allowing it to generate search results for complex queries.
Nonetheless, there is a high chance that conversational shopping is going to become widespread in the not-too-distant future. Amazon and Google are not alone in this pursuit. Many other companies are also working on AI-based search experiences like Microsoft, Baidu, Facebook, Apple, and more.
