In one of the most controversial uses of artificial intelligence to date, Amazon announced Wednesday that it will display AI-generated product images in its shopping app based on user search queries. That’s right — a retailer where people shop for real-world products believes that displaying fake photos will “help” consumers better find what they’re looking for.
Enough already.
See how Amazon he says in a blog post that feature will work. Customers may have something in mind but don’t know the right term to describe it in a way that yields useful results. (Examples Amazon gives are things like “necklace” for shirt styles or “rattan” for furniture.)
When someone enters a search query, they’ll be shown a variety of AI-generated product images below the autocomplete suggestions. (See photo above.)
For example, if you search for a blue gingham dress, you might see a few dress styles—short or long sleeves, different lengths, and other differences—appear as visual options. The idea is that clicking on one will direct you to search results that best match that style, powered by Amazon’s visual search capabilities.
In fact, it’s kind of bananas for a retailer to make fake products as a way to steer users into search results.
For starters, it’s potentially misleading—customers who don’t read carefully might think they’re being taken to a page where they could find that exact dress, and then be disappointed when it’s not available. And there’s the fairly obvious question of why you would make product images when you have a website full of actual photos of actual products — something an online shopper probably wants to see.
The feature follows a number of other attempts by Amazon to integrate artificial intelligence into its retail website and shopping app, with mixed results. On the more useful side, Amazon already summarizes customer reviews via AI, so you don’t need to read them all to understand a product’s key pros and cons. More surprisingly, last year it launched a short audio product roundup feature in which AI experts describe the highlights of a product, podcast-style.
Other recent AI features include “shoppable collages” created by AI to direct people to curated pages dedicated to a particular fashion style. Amazon Lens Livewhich scans products in a camera’s view to find visual matches. the ability to add text to visual searches. and a Lock Screen visual search widget for iOS.
Earlier this month, Amazon also replaced its Rufus AI chatbot with Alexa for Shopping to enable natural language shopping queries via voice and text.
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This does not affect our editorial independence.
