As Amazon deepens its investments in artificial intelligence (AI), the ecommerce giant is seeing a measurable impact on shopping behaviour and customer engagement.
According to Kishore Thota, director of shopping in India and emerging markets at Amazon, customers who use generative AI-powered shopping tools are three times more likely to make purchases than others.
In a conversation with Business Standard, Thota said globally, over 300 million customers interacted with Amazon's AI-powered shopping experiences in 2025, while in India, usage has grown three times year-on-year.
The company is also seeing strong retention among users of its AI shopping tools. According to Thota, around 30 per cent of customers return to use these features repeatedly, while users make an average of three queries per session. This, he said, indicates that the AI tools are being used for deeper shopping conversations and not simply one-time experimentation.
Thota said the company is using large language models (LLMs) and generative AI (GenAI)-powered systems to make shopping more natural, intuitive and personalised.
"Amazon's AI systems build a deeper understanding of customer preferences based on shopping behaviour and interactions, enabling more personalised recommendations and conversational shopping experiences."
Amazon has integrated several AI tools on its platform. For instance, the conversational AI shopping assistant Rufus helps customers discover products through personalised recommendations, price insights and product comparison.
Other features such as Lens AI enable visual search, while AI Review Highlights and Quick View simplify decision making by surfacing key insights and helping customers compare options.
-- Udisha Srivastav, Business Standard
