Amazon is testing AI-generated hosts that talk customers through product features

Amazon is testing a new feature that involves AI-generated hosts talking through product summaries. It looks fairly similar to Google’s audio overviews, which also include AI-generated hosts that seem plucked from a middling podcast.

Amazon says that these "AI shopping experts help save time by compiling research and providing product highlights for customers from product pages, reviews and insights." This leads me to an obvious question. Amazon is notorious for hosting fake reviews. Some studies suggest that fake reviews account for more than 40 percent of the sum total. Do these AI hosts pull from those reviews? We've reached out to Amazon and will update this post if we hear back.

Each audio summary will remind you that it was generated by AI, just before an introduction from the "expert" hosts. Amazon says these hosts are "like having helpful friends discuss potential purchases to make your shopping easier."

You might be able to try this out right now. It's currently available to some US customers on the mobile app for certain products, like this Ninja Blender, OSEA Undaria Algae Body Oil, SHOKZ OpenRun Pro headphones and a couple of other items. Just tap the "Hear the highlights" button under the product. Amazon has stated it'll be rolling this out to more customers and more products in the near future.

I can see this being a boon for those with visual impairment issues, but I listened to a couple of summaries and they certainly don't save any time. I could peruse reviews, look at product information and even conduct a web search of my own in a fraction of the time it took the friendly experts to complete their spiel.

The company says this feature is useful when "multitasking or on the go" but I don't tend to mindlessly spend money in that way. Do you? This seems like another AI thingamabob that nobody really asked for, but maybe it'll find a niche somewhere. Again, this could be seriously useful for the visually impaired, but that's not how Amazon is pitching it.

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