Amazon Presents Generative AI Shopping Assistant Rufus, Starts Beta Testing

Amazon, one of the largest e-commerce companies, has entered the segment of generative artificial intelligence (AI). The company has introduced AI-powered shopping assistant Rufus. It claims to improve the shopping experience of users. Apart from answering queries, this chatbot can help with suggestions and compare different products.

Rufus was introduced to the US Amazon The mobile app has been made available in beta to a few users. It will be rolled out to a larger number of users and more regions in the coming months. Amazon has said that this AI chatbot has been trained on Amazon’s product catalog, customer reviews, community Q&As, and information from the web. The company told TechCrunch that Amazon developed an internal large language model (LLM) specializing in shopping experiences to create Rufus.

According to a report in the New York Times, Amazon employees are allowed to bring their dogs to the workplace and one of the dogs that came in the early days was called Rufus. Users can ask the chatbot questions like “What to consider before buying headphones” and they will get the information in a conversational way. Apart from this, there will also be options to make follow-up queries, ask for suggestions, compare two different headphones or know about the durability and good quality of a particular product. This chatbot can take inputs in both text and audio format.

Amazon has not disclosed whether Rufus is available only for the mobile app or it will also be provided on the website. There is no separate button to activate this chatbot. To use it, when users type queries in the search bar of the app, it answers them in a dialog box at the bottom of the screen. Company has said that it has been using AI for several years to improve customer experience. Amazon has said that it uses AI and similar technologies for its personalized system of suggestions. It says, “We are excited about the potential of generative AI. We will continue to test new features to make searching and shopping easier on Amazon’s store.”