Amazon AWS Sells Alexa for Shopping AI Technology to Kate Spade and Other Retailers

Amazon has been using homegrown artificial intelligence to help users compare products and buy items — and now it's licensing that technology to other retailers, vying to become the backbone of AI shopping across the web. In a blog post Wednesday, Amazon said it's packaging the "architecture, starter code and learnings" from Alexa for Shopping for the broader retail industry, allowing retailers to launch their own AI shopping tools "in as little as 60 days." Earlier this month, Amazon rebranded its e-commerce chatbot from Rufus to Alexa for Shopping. The new tool is being offered via AWS, which could help reassure retailers wary of partnering with the industry giant. Amazon has already signed up Tapestry-owned luxury fashion brand Kate Spade, which used the service to launch a gifting assistant. The concierge was built on Anthropic's Haiku 4.5 model through Amazon Bedrock and went through roughly 2.5 months of testing before going live. OpenAI, Google, and Perplexity have also rolled out shopping tools, though some efforts have stumbled due to technical bugs or challenges onboarding retailers.