Amazon is doubling down on AI-driven shopping with the launch of Lens Live, a real-time visual search feature designed to help consumers discover products by pointing their phone at items in the real world. The new experience builds on Amazon Lens — the company’s existing visual search tool — and integrates directly with Amazon’s AI shopping assistant, Rufus, to provide instant product insights.
Unlike Amazon Lens, which allows users to upload an image, take a photo, or scan a barcode to find similar products, Lens Live brings an interactive, real-time layer to visual search. Shoppers can point their camera at any object, see product matches displayed in a swipeable carousel at the bottom of the screen, and quickly add items to their cart with a tap on the (+) icon or save them to a wish list by tapping the heart icon.
The launch of Lens Live is part of Amazon’s broader push to enhance online shopping with AI. Over the past year, the company has introduced a range of AI-powered features, including Rufus, AI-generated shopping guides, smarter product reviews, clothing fit recommendations, AI audio summaries, personalized prompts, and merchant tools.
Lens Live also taps into a behavior many customers already engage in: comparison shopping while in physical stores. The feature allows shoppers to instantly check if Amazon carries the same or similar products — and potentially at a better price — without leaving the app.
The technology behind Lens Live is powered by Amazon SageMaker, which deploys machine learning models at scale, and runs on AWS-managed Amazon OpenSearch. Integration with Rufus further enhances the experience by offering conversational product insights, summaries, and suggested questions customers can ask before purchasing.
Lens Live is debuting on the Amazon Shopping app for iOS, rolling out first to “tens of millions” of U.S. users before expanding to the broader U.S. audience. Amazon has not yet announced plans for a global rollout.
With Lens Live, Amazon is positioning itself more aggressively against visual search competitors like Google Lens and Pinterest Lens, aiming to make the process of discovering and buying products faster, smarter, and more immersive.
