Amazon's 'Help Me Decide' AI feature picks products for you, so you can stop doomscrolling
Think about all the times you've scrolled through Amazon for an hour trying to pick between similar products.
Picture yourself browsing through dozens of smart plugs on Amazon, cross-checking specs, reading reviews, opening multiple tabs, only to feel more confused than when you started. Well, Amazon just launched a feature that might finally put an end to that exhausting cycle.
The company rolled out “Help Me Decide” on October 23, 2025, an AI-powered tool that analyzes your shopping behavior and just tells you which product to buy. No more endless comparison paralysis.
What is Help Me Decide?
The feature shows up after you’ve been browsing similar products for a while without making a purchase. Once the “Help Me Decide” button appears on the product page or under “Keep shopping for” on your homepage, you tap it and boom, Amazon’s AI gives you one clear recommendation that aligns to your needs.
“Help Me Decide saves you time by using AI to provide product recommendations tailored to your needs after you’ve been browsing several similar items, giving you confidence in your purchase decision,” said Daniel Lloyd, vice president of Personalization at Amazon.
The tool doesn’t just throw a random product at you either. It explains why it picked that specific item based on your browsing history, past purchases, and even analyzes customer reviews to match what you’re actually looking for.
For instance, if you’ve been comparing Alexa-compatible smart lights and recently bought an Echo Dot, it’ll suggest bulbs that integrate seamlessly with your setup, not generic ones that require separate hubs. Even more interesting, you can choose to upgrade the pick or select a budget option.
How Amazon’s AI is riding a massive wave
Amazon’s timing couldn’t be better. According to Adobe Analytics data tracking over 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail sites, AI-powered shopping traffic jumped 4,700% year-over-year in July 2025 alone. The company predicts a 520% surge in AI shopping traffic during the 2025 holiday season, peaking around Thanksgiving.
What this tells us is that people are moving beyond just using AI for research, they’re now comfortable making purchases directly after AI recommendations.
How it stacks up against the competition
Amazon isn’t alone in this race. Walmart teamed up with OpenAI to let customers plan meals and shop through ChatGPT. Google’s AI Mode already has over 100 million users in the U.S. and India. Even Perplexity launched its own AI browser called Comet.
But here’s where Amazon differs: instead of launching a separate AI shopping assistant or browser, it’s baking the intelligence directly into your existing shopping flow. The feature uses large language models along with AWS Bedrock, OpenSearch, and SageMaker to make it all work seamlessly.
It’s similar to how Amazon rolled out its AI Shopping Guides last year and later introduced “Buy For Me”, an AI agent that can even shop third-party sites for you. Add in Rufus, the conversational shopping assistant, and you can see Amazon is building an entire AI-powered shopping experience, one feature at a time.
Currently, Help Me Decide is only available to U.S. users on the Amazon Shopping app (iOS and Android) and mobile web, with a broader rollout expected in the coming months.
So what are the conditions?
Of course, there are questions worth asking. How does Amazon decide which products get recommended? Could sponsored products or Amazon’s own brands influence those “best” picks? The company hasn’t explicitly addressed these transparency concerns yet.
In Adobe’s survey of 5,000 U.S. consumers, 39% have already used generative AI for online shopping, with top use cases including product research (53%), recommendations (40%), and finding deals (36%).
Bottom line
It is okay to think that Amazon is betting big on AI becoming the default shopping experience and the data suggests they’re probably right. When 38% of consumers are already using AI for shopping and that number is expected to hit 52% by the end of the year, it’s clear this isn’t just a gimmick.
The real test will be whether Help Me Decide actually recommends the best products or just the ones Amazon wants to push. For now, it’s available for free, and if it genuinely saves time while helping you find what you need, that’s a win.
Whether this becomes the new normal for online shopping or just another feature we forget about in a few months – we’ll have to wait and see. But one thing’s certain: the way we shop online is changing fast, and AI is driving that change.
