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Amazon’s Secret AI for Shopping Inspiration

Amazon is secretly building an AI tool that could inject a needed dose of shopping inspiration into its giant e-commerce website.

The initiative is codenamed Project Theia, possibly after the goddess of sight and light who the ancient Greeks believed made gold and silver shiny and valuable.

The new technology could generate synthetic images based on user queries and product photos to help shoppers more easily discover and visualize new products.

The service will let shoppers place a product image, or upload their own pictures, in AI-generated scenes while shopping on Amazon, according to an internal document obtained by BI and people familiar with the project.

With Theia, which is expected to appear under the product image on Amazon, shoppers get to see what the item looks like in a certain setting, or receive shopping recommendations based on the query.

For example, if a shopper is looking for “modern furniture,” Theia will create an image with several home products that can help the shopper browse and discover new items, one of the people said. These sources asked not to be identified discussing private matters.

Internally, Theia is referred to as “Create style ideas,” and is expected to be positioned as an inspiration tool for shoppers, according to the document.

In an email to BI, an Amazon spokesperson confirmed the company is testing “AI-powered image generator that allows shoppers to view products in lifestyle settings.” Amazon began testing this feature with select customers and products in December, but the final tool may change once it receives more customer feedback, the spokesman added.

“Amazon has been using machine learning and AI for more than 25 years in virtually everything we do, and we continue to invest in generative AI across all of our businesses,” the spokesperson said.

A source of inspiration for online shoppers

Theia’s broader goal is to turn Amazon into a place where people go for shopping inspiration. While Amazon’s search engine has long been a popular starting point for online shoppers, its use case has mostly been limited to people who already know what they want to buy, according to the people involved in Theia. Those looking to discover new products and brands often use other digital channels, like TikTok or YouTube, these people said.

Amazon has tried to tackle this issue by adding more social and entertainment features in recent years. It launched Inspire, a TikTok-like shopping feed embedded in Amazon’s mobile app, and Fit Review Highlights, a personalized size guidance tool. Earlier this year, it also rolled out Rufus, a new AI-powered shopping assistant. In 2017, it released Amazon Spark, a shopping feed of stories and photos that looked similar to Instagram, which shuttered only a couple years later.

These efforts haven’t been able to grab the attention of online shoppers from other services, according to Juozas Kaziokenas, CEO of e-commerce research firm Marketplace Pulse. He told BI that Amazon’s inspiration and social features “remain as underinvested and half-baked features.”

For Theia to work, Amazon will need to make additional room on its product pages so users can upload photos or make specific queries, according to the people familiar with the project. That has been a major challenge as multiple teams at Amazon are competing for their services to appear on Amazon’s website, these people said. Rufus, for example, now shows up in the middle of Amazon’s product pages.

Still, Amazon’s leadership appears upbeat about Theia’s potential. During a February internal all-hands meeting, Amazon retail CEO Doug Herrington hinted at Theia’s features, while mentioning a series of new AI tools he’s been reviewing in what he called an “AI show and tell” in his office, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by BI.

“Just last week we were meeting with an image team that is taking products and allowing us to create images of those products on models with humans or in lifestyle images,” Herrington said. “It’s just amazing across the board what’s going on.”

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