Debenhams Group accelerates the adoption of AI with AWS

Debenhams Group, the online retail powerhouse behind brands including Debenhams, PrettyLittleThing, boohoo, boohooMAN and Karen Millen, is accelerating the adoption of AI to drive business growth and enhance the shopping experience for its customers.

A new multi-year agreement with cloud provider, Amazon Web Services (AWS), will streamline The Group’s operations and rapidly scale new brands using AI-driven tools.

The Group already uses AWS cloud services on the Debenhams platform. AWS’s serverless cloud technology powers the retailer’s highly successful marketplace model by facilitating the faster onboarding of third-party sellers, a broader product selection and an effortless purchasing journey.

Building on this foundation, Debenhams will now deploy advanced technologies like Generative AI (GenAI) to deliver business value through increased operational efficiencies and improved personalisation. 

Enhancing the shopping experience with AI 

AI-generated content, powered by Amazon Bedrock – a fully managed service that makes it easy to build and scale GenAI applications – will enable Debenhams Group to automate product descriptions and translations across tens of thousands of products, improving consistency, localisation and speed to market.

Automating product descriptions has made the process 20 times faster. On top of that, translations into six languages happen automatically, so no extra work is needed. This means products are ready to sell in different countries much quicker, helping customers everywhere get access to them sooner.

Additionally, Debenhams’ Interactive AI Room Styler, co-developed through the AWS Prototyping investment programme, will let customers upload a photo, select a design style and receive personalised decor suggestions, linking inspiration directly to shoppable listings.

Meanwhile, AI-powered product attribution and taxonomy will make search and navigation more intuitive, helping customers discover more relevant products faster.

After successful initial rollout across Debenhams and its labels, the Group will now embed AWS technology across its other brands, with boohoo the most recent brand to adopt AWS’s AI technologies in a matter of weeks. 

Dan Finley, CEO of Debenhams Group, said: “Collaborating with AWS is a key part of our long-term strategy to transform Debenhams Group into a modern, technology-led retailer. We’ve successfully replaced outdated legacy systems with scalable, cloud-first architecture that’s adaptable, resilient and built to support innovation well into the Group’s future.

“Our strategic investment in AI and emerging technologies will not only future proof the business, but create a faster, smarter and more personalised experience for our customers. Working closely with a hand-picked team of engineers and AWS specialists, together, we’re not only accelerating our digital road-map, but making Debenhams Group an exciting place to work for the next generation of tech talent.”

Duncan Stewart, Head of Retail & Consumer Packaged Goods UK & Ireland, Amazon Web Services said: “We're delighted to expand our collaboration with Debenhams Group as they continue to accelerate their adoption of AI. The team at Debenhams has already achieved impressive results, developing a highly innovative digital commerce platform on AWS that is a strong example in the retail industry. By leveraging the flexibility and scalability of the cloud, Debenhams Group now has the technology foundations to quickly build and deploy innovative new AI-powered products and services across all of its brands, which will help drive business productivity and growth. We look forward to supporting their continued success.