Amazon’s new “Lens Live” lets you shop for anything you can point your camera at
Just by pointing your phone camera at a room, the AI feature identifies objects and pulls up buying options on the spot.
Ever looked at something in your living room and thought, “Where can I buy that?” Well, Amazon now has an answer. The company just rolled out a new feature called Lens Live, and it basically turns your phone’s camera into a shopping assistant.
Here’s how it works: open the Amazon Shopping app on your iPhone, point your camera at whatever catches your eye, a lamp, sneakers, a bag of chips, pretty much anything, and the app instantly scans it.
Using an object detection model, Lens Live compares what you see through your camera with Amazon’s massive catalog of billions of products. In seconds, it serves up a swipeable carousel of matches that you can scroll through. If you like what you see, you can add it straight to your cart or your wishlist without ever having to type a single word in the search bar.
It’s kind of like Google’s Gemini Live, which lets you scan and ask questions about things in your environment. But Amazon’s version leans hard into shopping; every object your camera lands on could come with a big “buy now” button.
Emmanuel Oyedeji
Amazon isn’t stopping there, though. Lens Live also taps into Rufus, the company’s AI shopping assistant, to give you quick summaries of product descriptions and answer your questions. So if you’re checking out a pair of sneakers, Rufus can tell you about the material, how they fit, or whether there are cheaper alternatives — without you having to dig through reviews.
This isn’t Amazon’s first try at visual shopping. The app already lets you search with uploaded photos, barcodes, or by snapping a picture. But Lens Live takes it up a notch by letting you pan your camera around a room in real time, watching as the AI identifies objects and pulls up buying options on the spot.
Right now, Lens Live is rolling out only on iOS, so iPhone users get first dibs. Amazon says more customers will get access “in the coming weeks,” which likely means Android users won’t have to wait too long before they can shop with their cameras, too.
So the next time you’re at a friend’s house and spot a cool lamp or stylish rug, you don’t have to awkwardly ask where they bought it, just quietly point your phone at it and let Amazon do the rest.
Louis Eriakha
