Amazon adds AI image search to help shoppers find products

Amazon is betting that the next big shopping advantage is not a lower price, but a better way to describe taste. Its new AI image search turns vague prompts into real-time visuals inside the Amazon Shopping app, a move that could matter most for personalized gifts, custom home pieces and other buys where shoppers know the mood before they know the product name.

The feature appears below autocomplete suggestions in the app and starts in apparel and home, two categories where small design details can make or break a purchase. Amazon says a shopper can type something like “cowl neck” for a draped-collar shirt or “rattan” for a woven-panel couch, then tap the generated image and move straight to visually similar products. That turns search from a keyword exercise into something closer to browsing by instinct.

Mihir Bhanot, Amazon’s director of search, wrote in a June 3 blog post that the company is using visual-search features to make discovery easier and more enjoyable. It is a familiar problem with a new tool attached to it: the person looking for a holiday gift, a push present or an anniversary piece often knows the feeling they want to trigger, but not the exact term that unlocks the right result. Amazon says the image generator is meant to bridge that gap, and will expand beyond apparel and home over time.

The launch fits into a broader AI buildout that Amazon has been assembling across shopping. The company rolled out AI Shopping Guides in October 2024 for 100 product types, introduced Lens Live in September 2025 and said the tool was available to tens of millions of U.S. customers on the Amazon Shopping iOS app. Amazon also added Interests, a feature that scans its store for products matching shopping prompts, and moved its shopping assistant toward Alexa for Shopping. On June 17, 2025, Andy Jassy said generative AI was being used “in virtually every corner of the company” and would reinvent customer experiences.

The open question is whether visual AI makes shopping better or just more dazzling. Some tech coverage has warned that generated images can look like products without actually being products, which could blur the line between inspiration and inventory. Amazon says the images are labeled and are intended to guide shoppers toward real items, a distinction that matters if the feature is going to help people find niche, engraved or highly specific gifts instead of simply creating prettier search results.