Amazon weighs vast product index to draw shoppers and AI agents

Amazon has outlined a project to collect information about products sold throughout the internet, including items unavailable through its own marketplace, according to Reuters. Called the World Product Graph, the proposed index would make that information accessible on Amazon’s website. Whether the company will put the plan into operation remains unclear.

The project is intended to give shoppers more reasons to conduct their product research within Amazon. By expanding the information available on its site, the company aims to reduce the likelihood that customers turn to Reddit or Google for answers. The proposal also seeks to bring people to Amazon when they are looking for merchandise offered by other retailers.

That ambition extends to shopping conducted through artificial intelligence agents. The idea is that a sufficiently large collection of product information could encourage those agents to use Amazon’s index instead of competing sources. People relying on bots to help them shop could consequently be directed to Amazon’s pages, even when the products they want are sold elsewhere.

Amazon already provides some connections to merchandise beyond its own store. Its shop direct feature, introduced last year, has begun displaying links to products from outside retailers. The proposed World Product Graph would pursue the broader goal of gathering details about products available across the internet and making Amazon a destination for that information.

Another purpose of the project would be to improve Amazon’s AI shopping assistant, now known as Alexa for Shopping and previously called Rufus. According to Reuters, the internal document describes frequent factual errors or incomplete responses from Rufus. It also identifies the expense of using AI to handle customers’ Amazon searches. A larger supply of data is reportedly intended to improve accuracy while allowing the system to operate with cheaper models.

The proposal faces unresolved implementation questions. The document reportedly says the project requires figuring out how brands arrange their products on their websites, a task that could involve crawling other retailers’ sites. Reuters could not establish whether or when the plan would proceed, although the document listed October 1, 2027, as a release date.

Amazon cautioned against treating the document as a definitive account of its intentions. In a statement to Reuters, the company said draft and outdated materials can provide an incomplete picture, and that the existence of a brainstorming document does not necessarily reflect its current plans.