Customers using AI tools 3 times more likely to buy: Amazon's Kishore Thota

Amazon says customers using its generative AI-powered shopping tools are three times more likely to make purchases, with adoption in India rising sharply year-on-year

As Amazon deepens its investments in artificial intelligence (AI), the e-commerce giant is seeing a measurable impact on shopping behaviour and customer engagement. 

According to Kishore Thota, director of shopping in India and emerging markets at Amazon, customers who use generative AI-powered shopping tools are three times more likely to make purchases than others. 

In a conversation with Business Standard, Thota said that globally, more than 300 million customers interacted with Amazon's AI-powered shopping experiences in 2025, while in India, usage has grown three times year-on-year (Y-o-Y). 

The company is also seeing strong retention among users of its AI shopping tools. According to Thota, around 30 per cent of customers return to use these features repeatedly, while users make an average of three queries per session. This, he said, indicates that the AI tools are being used for deeper shopping conversations and not simply one-time experimentation. 

Thota said that the company is using large language models and generative AI (GenAI)-powered systems to make shopping more natural, intuitive and personalised. “Amazon’s AI systems build a deeper understanding of customer preferences based on shopping behaviour and interactions, enabling more personalised recommendations and conversational shopping experiences.” 

Amazon has integrated several AI tools on its platform. For instance, the conversational AI shopping assistant Rufus helps customers discover products through personalised recommendations, price insights and product comparison. Other features such as Lens AI enable visual search, while AI Review Highlights and Quick View simplify decision making by surfacing key insights and helping customers compare options. 

Out of these tools, Thoda said that Quick View and Price History have seen strong customer adoption. "Our focus is on helping customers discover the exact products they are looking for within an extremely large catalogue," Thota said. 

Notably, in this recent visit to India, Amazon’s chief executive officer Andy Jassy had announced an additional $13 billion investment in the country. The announcement took the company’s total planned investment in India to nearly $48 billion by 2030. 

Of the total investment, Amazon said it will put in around $21 billion to expand AI and cloud infrastructure.