Introduction
Amazon Lens Live brings practical visual search: instant scanning, a swipeable product carousel and Rufus AI providing insights while you browse with your camera.
Quick definition: Amazon Lens Live scans products in real time and surfaces purchasable matches without leaving the camera view.
Context
Lens Live upgrades Amazon Lens inside the Amazon Shopping app on iOS; it's rolling out to tens of millions of U.S. customers now, with broader availability coming soon. The interface shows top matches in a carousel at the bottom, lets users tap to focus a single item, and add items to cart or wishlist directly from the camera screen.
How it works (overview)
The system pairs an accurate, lightweight on-device object detection model with a deep visual embedding model that matches the user's view against billions of Amazon products; Rufus LLM supplies suggested questions and short product summaries.
The Challenge
Delivering a smooth visual search experience requires fast on-device detection, scalable retrieval across a vast catalog, and timely insights without degrading app performance.
Solution / Approach
Lens Live runs object detection on-device for immediate identification, uses visual embeddings to retrieve exact or similar items, and relies on AWS-managed Amazon OpenSearch and Amazon SageMaker to deploy models at scale; Rufus provides conversational prompts and summaries under the carousel.
Practical benefits
- Instant scanning and swipeable matches for quick comparisons
- Tap-to-focus to inspect a specific product in-camera
- Add to cart and save to wishlist without leaving the camera view
- Rufus AI offers fast insights to support AI search and product discovery
Conclusion
Amazon Lens Live streamlines turning a spotted item into a purchase by combining on-device detection, large-scale visual retrieval and conversational assistance via Rufus inside the Amazon Shopping app.
FAQ
Quick FAQ definition: Lens Live uses your camera to find similar products, surface summaries and enable fast purchases from the scanning interface.
1. What is Amazon Lens Live and how does it improve visual search?
Amazon Lens Live performs real-time scanning, displays top matches in a carousel and adds Rufus-powered summaries to speed purchase decisions.
2. On which platforms is Lens Live available?
Lens Live is available to tens of millions of U.S. customers in the Amazon Shopping app on iOS and will be rolled out more widely in the coming weeks.
3. Which AI services power Lens Live?
Lens Live leverages on-device object detection, deep visual embeddings, Amazon OpenSearch and Amazon SageMaker, plus the Rufus LLM for conversational prompts.
4. Does Lens Live change how users discover products?
Yes; by combining instant matching and AI-generated insights, Lens Live shortens the path from discovery to purchase within the app.