Amazon's AI Shopping Assistant Expands to Retailers — Kate Spade Is First

Amazon is offering its AI shopping technology to other retailers through a new Agentic Shopping Assistant built on AWS, with Kate Spade among the first brands to adopt the platform.

The service allows retailers to build AI-powered shopping assistants for their own websites and apps. Amazon confirmed that each deployment can be fully customised to a retailer's catalogue, customer base, shopping environment, and brand voice.

The solution is based on technology originally developed for Amazon's own online store. The company is now packaging its architecture, starter code, and lessons learned from Alexa for Shopping for use by third-party retailers.

📊 More than 300 million customers used Amazon's AI shopping assistant last year, with the assistant generating nearly US$12 billion in incremental sales during the same period.

Amazon stated the service enables retailers to deploy conversational agents "in weeks" — rather than the years it might take to build a comparable solution from scratch. The offering includes architecture guidance, starter code, and support from AWS experts and system integrator partners.

🛍️ Kate Spade Uses AI for Gift Shopping

Kate Spade, owned by Tapestry, is one of the first brands to leverage the technology — introducing an AI Gift Concierge that helps shoppers discover gift options through a conversational interface. The assistant is specifically focused on the gift-buying journey.

🎁 Amazon's own data reveals that 53% of shoppers "report stress" during gift purchases — a key insight behind the development of Kate Spade's AI Gift Concierge.

The assistant can recommend gifts based on occasion and customer inputs. Fabio Luzzi, Tapestry's Chief Data and Analytics Officer, told Digital Commerce 360 that the tool was born from listening to consumers and identifying what they needed when shopping for gifts.

Tapestry tested the assistant for approximately two and a half months before making it available to consumers, according to Amazon's official announcement.

⚙️ AWS Services Powering the Assistant

The system is built on three core AWS services:

• Amazon Bedrock — the foundation for generative AI applications
• AgentCore — responsible for operating AI agents at scale
• OpenSearch — handling search and product retrieval

📈 According to Amazon, conversational shopping sessions generate conversion rates 3.5× higher than traditional keyword-based product searches.

The AWS launch follows Amazon's rollout of Alexa for Shopping in the US in May. That feature allows users to type shopping-related questions directly into Amazon's search bar and receive conversational answers. Under the hood, Alexa for Shopping combines elements of both Rufus and Alexa+ — Rufus being the AI shopping assistant Amazon originally launched in 2024.

📷 Photo by Shutter Speed