Spot something you love while scrolling online or browsing in real life?
Amazon has just rolled out Lens Live, a new trick for its iOS Shopping app that turns your phone camera into a supercharged shopping assistant. With a quick scan, it recognizes the item and instantly brings up a carousel of similar options you can swipe through and compare.
What’s striking is the new, hands-on approach. You can zoom in on a chosen item right in the camera view, instantly add it to your cart, or stash it away on your wish list without leaving the screen.
The experience feels interactive and instant, almost as if the app is reading your mind while you shop. It makes tracking down that must-have cardigan or speaker a matter of seconds.
Smart Assistance, Instant Answers
Lens Live integrates tightly with Amazon’s AI shopping assistant, Rufus. While browsing through possible matches, you’ll spot product summaries and tailored questions pop up under the carousel, offering quick guidance or highlighting key features.
The idea is to help shoppers make faster, smarter decisions. For those moments you’re curious about how a product actually stacks up or need a nudge toward the right choice, Rufus has you covered.
Amazon’s Tony Bacos sums up the project simply: “We want customers to feel confident, informed, and in control as they shop.”
Lens Live’s powerful real time matching is driven by advanced computer vision and deep learning models. By leveraging tools like Amazon OpenSearch and SageMaker, the system scans and recognizes objects using edge device processing, speeding everything up while reducing the output lag.
It compares what your camera sees against millions of products across Amazon, surfacing either exact matches or the closest lookalike options.
Traditional Lens features remain, too. Snap a photo, upload a saved image, or scan barcodes for those who prefer the old way. But for millions of iOS users, Lens Live takes the convenience of visual search and instantly turns it up a notch.
The company says the update is available for tens of millions of customers already, with even broader access coming for more US shoppers in the next few weeks, and even broader access coming for more US shoppers in the next few weeks.
