Amazon App Tests New AI Feature That Can Answer Product Questions and Even Make You Laugh
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Amazon is testing a new AI feature in its mobile app for iOS and Android, allowing customers to ask specific questions about products. The AI tool can help accurately calculate the size of a new shelf, determine how long a battery will last, and even... write you a Christmas carol about snow boots.
The new feature is designed for more practical applications, but it seems the tool is also happy to respond to more colorful queries, answering the same kinds of questions people occasionally ask AI chatbots when bored.
Through the question box on product pages (the box just before customer reviews), users can ask Amazon's AI tool about products. Currently, only some users have access to this feature, but several Verge employees spotted it in their apps and found it responding to creative prompts. For example, it wrote a joke about a flash card reader, crafted a bedtime story for a hard drive, and even described snow boots in a lighthearted, humorous way. But it won't flirt with you. Our editors attempted to test the AI's capabilities beyond its intended scope by directly prompting it to flirt with us rather than describing products in that manner. "Sorry, but I don't have personal feelings and won't engage in flirtatious behavior," Amazon's AI tool responded.
Amazon told CNBC that they are still testing this feature. The media outlet added that the feature cannot engage in conversations unrelated to products or answer irrelevant questions, which appears largely accurate. When we tried asking the AI tool for an eagle sauce recipe on a snow boot product page, it replied that no generative AI answer was available. If you ask whether Amazon Chairman Jeff Bezos would wear these boots in the context of the item, the AI tool will provide a speculative response.
Over the past few months, Amazon has been rolling out multiple AI features in its retail division. Currently, it uses large language models to generate product review summaries, detect fake reviews, and recommend clothing size options to customers. 该公司一直在通过其企业云部门AWS推动生成式AI的发展。去年11月，AWS推出了其Titan Image Generator，该工具允许公司使用文本到图像的提示生成图片。它还为企业客户提供了访问其他流行的基础AI模型，如Meta的Llama2、Anthropic的Claude和Stability AI的Stable Diffusion。