Amazon has significantly increased its investment in artificial intelligence, recently launching innovative products aimed at improving user experiences. While the tech giant does not seem intent on dominating the AI space, it has made notable advancements.

The most recent addition is the launch of Nova Act, an AI model specifically designed to enhance the shopping experience. Nova Act builds on Amazon’s previous attempts to introduce AI-powered tools for shopping, such as Rufus, which, unfortunately, did not garner much attention.

Alexa Plus was another recent innovation, made available for free to Prime subscribers but requiring a $20 monthly fee for other users. The Nova Act is a comprehensive AI model intended to facilitate better purchasing decisions and automate various tasks.

According to Amazon, it powers features already found in Alexa Plus, offering “agent” capabilities that broaden its functionalities. Nova Act’s features are somewhat akin to OpenAI’s Operator, but with a focus on shopping.

Users can leverage Nova Act for a range of tasks, such as searching the internet, making comparisons, purchasing items, or even answering questions related to images—all through simple prompts. It also accommodates detailed instructions that can modify its actions, such as avoiding optional upsells during transactions.

Importantly, Nova Act is the inaugural product from Amazon’s Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) Labs. It is the sixth member in the Nova model lineup, which was introduced by Amazon at the end of the previous year with other models focusing on tasks like reasoning and media generation.

Currently, Nova Act is in a research preview stage, making it available only to developers for testing. To enhance accessibility, Amazon has launched a dedicated website for the Nova models, allowing users to interact with them in a user-friendly format akin to traditional chatbots.

Prior to this, the models were primarily accessible via Amazon Bedrock, a platform designed to centralize various AI models for developers.