- Amazon’s new “Help Me Decide” feature uses AI to analyze your shopping behavior and recommend a product
- The feature is available in the U.S. on mobile apps and browsers
- The AI makes and explains its personalized suggestions using browsing history and customer reviews
Amazon wants to use AI to reduce the exhaustion online shopping can sometimes induce. The new Help Me Decide button, now appearing in the United States on mobile browsers and Amazon’s app, promises to cut to the chase and pick the ideal product for you to buy. No more infinite tab hopping through endless reviews.
The button appears after you’ve been browsing a few similar products at the top of the page. Tapping it sends you to a personalized recommendation based on your browsing history, shopping patterns, and existing customer reviews.
And the AI will break down why it’s the ideal choice for you, including relevant features and references to your past purchases. If you want to weigh your options a bit more, it’ll also show you a cheaper alternative and a fancier upgrade.
The button is only the latest effort by Amazon to incorporate AI into its shopping experience, like the recently released Lens Live shopping tool. The button resembles a simplified version of the “Interests” feature, alerting you to products you might care about and the AI-generated personalized “Shopping Guides.” It’s like a preset conversation with Amazon’s AI conversational shopping assistant, Rufus, in some ways.
But what makes Help Me Decide different from those tools – and, indeed, rival AI shopping features offered by the likes of Google Gemini or ChatGPT – is its assertiveness. Instead of relying on the age-old suggestions based on what people who bought something also liked, the AI interprets your intent and narrows things down to what seems to be the best for you as an individual. It looks at context, not just the keywords in a search.
For instance, if you’ve been looking at photography equipment, it won’t just recommend more and more cameras. It might suggest special lenses or even frames for the photos you take, with strong customer reviews mentioning nature photography.
That ability to combine current context with historical behavior could make it one of Amazon’s most persuasive shopping features yet. and also its most subtly influential. The company positions it as a time-saver: a way to eliminate indecision and close the loop between intent and action. And in fairness, that’s exactly what it might be for many shoppers.
But it’s worth pausing on how powerful this kind of nudging could become. You’ve probably already experienced a more passive version of this system in the form of those uncanny recommendations from Amazon that seem to have listened to your most private conversations or the very thoughts in your head. Help Me Decide takes it further by being specific and identifying the exact product (the AI determines) you were probably going to choose anyway.
For many people, this is a dream come true. Shopping, especially online, can feel like trying to pick a favorite leaf in a forest. No matter how good the filters, reviews, and star ratings are, it can still be exhausting. So the idea of pressing one button and getting (the right) answer might feel like magic. The fact that it comes with a written rationale makes it more trustworthy.
But it also shifts shopping from you choosing the product to choosing whether to accept the product the AI chose for you. That’s something akin to hiring a personal shopper, interior decorator, or event planner, but without the human interactions that lead you to trust their understanding of your taste. Some people may find that comforting. Others may feel pushed.
There’s also the matter of data. Help Me Decide relies on deep, individualized behavioral patterns. Amazon knows what you search for, what you click on, how long you hover, and what you eventually buy. Now, it’s using that data not just to recommend, but to select. The more confident and accurate the suggestions become, the harder it is to know whether your preferences are shaping your behavior—or the other way around.
Still, from a usability standpoint, it’s hard to deny the feature’s appeal. The time savings alone are valuable. Whether the future of AI-led shopping sounds exciting or eerie depends on your relationship with shopping and AI. And not even the Help Me Decide button can pick which attitude best suits you.
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erichs211@gmail.com (Eric Hal Schwartz)
