4 ways to use AI to shop on Amazon Prime Day

Amazon Prime Day is just around the corner, but looking for the best deals or features on discounted products can seem overwhelming. Artificial intelligence (AI) tools already significantly enhance the Prime Day shopping experience with smart features and capabilities, from Autofill to personalized recommendations. But newer AI tools can make deal shopping even easier. 

Also: The 25 best early Amazon Prime Day 2024 deals

The Prime Day annual sales event is on Tuesday, July 16, and Wednesday, July 17. Amazon has recently rolled out new AI tools that you can use just in time for Prime Day.

4 ways to use AI to shop on Prime Day

Whether buying a tablet, robot vacuum, TV, or clothing, shopping on Amazon can give you an overwhelming list of search results when looking for the right deal. The good news is parsing these results is easy with current AI tools, like Amazon's AI shopping assistant, Rufus, and AI-generated review sentiments. 

Also: The 19 best early Prime Day 2024 Amazon Echo device deals

1. Use the Rufus AI chatbot

Amazon just announced that its generative AI-powered shopping assistant, Rufus, is now available for all US customers, just in time for Prime Day. Rufus performs much like ChatGPT and other AI chatbots but is trained on Amazon's wide catalog and is here to enhance the shopping experience for Amazon customers. 

Instead of combing through Amazon search results to find what you need, you can engage Rufus in text conversations and ask for specific recommendations, product comparisons, and expert advice. Rufus narrows down your searches by understanding the context of your request, giving you results specific to what you're looking for, even with terms that aren't available in the filter menu. 

Aside from searching for "photo printer paper", you can ask Rufus specific questions like, "Which printer paper is suitable for photos?" or "Which printer paper options offer high brightness?" 

Also: Prime Day invitation-only deals are back on Amazon. Here's how to sign up

Rufus is available to all Amazon customers in the Amazon Shopping mobile app, as it's unavailable to desktop users. 

2. Visual recognition of different products

I'm a big Google Lens fan, and I use it for everything from searching for plants and bugs to looking up the names of my kids' Squishmallows. However, not everyone knows Amazon has a similar visual recognition feature built into its mobile app, Amazon Lens.

Amazon shoppers can search for products on the mobile app using their phone's camera or photo upload. The search bar at the top of the Amazon mobile app has the Amazon Lens icon next to the microphone icon. If you press this button, you'll enter the Amazon Lens feature, where you can scan products and barcodes or upload photos of products to search. 

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I've used this feature to look for toys my kids have seen at their cousin's house, to scan products in the Amazon yearly holiday toy catalog, and to search for grocery items to add to my cart. 

When you upload a photo, you can circle anything you want to search in Amazon, like Android's Circle to Search feature. The app will look for products similar to what you selected and give you a list of search results. 

3. Summarize buyer reviews with AI

Amazon recently introduced AI-powered sentiment analysis in its product reviews, an AI-generated paragraph summarizing the product's buyer reviews. While one paragraph is often insufficient to convey what thousands of reviewers say, these summaries offer the gist of what buyers think about a purchase.

For example, the reviews of the new Echo Spot, a smart alarm clock launched as an Amazon Prime Day promotion, are topped by a 'Customers say' section with this AI-generated summary, which reads:

"Customers like the voice commands, ease of setup, appearance and weather information of the digital device. For example, they mention it does a better job at picking up voices in the room over any noise, has a nice equalizer for range of sound and that it's easy to read the screen. They also like the sound quality, and content settings. That said, opinions are mixed on quality and temperature sensor."

This paragraph is followed by text that says, "AI-generated from the text of customer reviews."

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These AI-generated sentiment analyses give you an 'in-a-nutshell' overview of the customers' experience with the device, highlighting both the positive and negative aspects. The summary helps you understand, in broad terms, what you can expect from what buyers think, which you can corroborate by reading the full reviews. 

4. Ask questions in the product description

Amazon has had a question-and-answer area in their product listings for years, where customers can ask product-specific questions, and the seller and other customers can respond. However, these questions, though helpful, are highly inefficient and prone to user error. 

Recently, Amazon updated this feature to generate answers with AI, with information taken from the product description, the questions and answers, and the customer reviews. 

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If, for example, you're looking for a smart light compatible with Amazon Alexa, you can go to the question field in the product listing and ask if it's also compatible with Google Assistant. Amazon generates an answer for you in natural language, with wording like "Customers say it's compatible with Google Assistant, and they've had good experiences with this feature."