Amazon was announced Today, it launched an AI-powered shopping assistant, called Rufus, trained on the e-commerce giant’s product catalog as well as information from around the web. The company says the new tool will roll out to a subset of customers in the US in beta starting today, before rolling out to more users in the coming weeks. Customers will be able to chat with Rufus within the Amazon mobile app to get help finding products, perform product comparisons and get recommendations on what to buy.
The launch of the AI chatbot comes on the heels of other AI additions across Amazon.com aimed at improving the shopping experience for consumers, ranging from tools that help customers find clothes that fit to those that boost product reviews with summaries of notable products and customer sentiment, as well as others aimed at advertisers and sellers.
Rufus, meanwhile, is a creative AI experience that has been trained on product catalogs, customer reviews, community Q&As, and information from around the web to answer customer questions related to their shopping needs, whether they are at the beginning. of their shopping trip, trying to narrow down the options or when they have more specific questions.
The company tells TechCrunch that it built a new, in-house LLM specialized for markets to power this experience, then trained it on its data and “publicly available data from around the web.” However, it did not specify whether this data included other publicly available retail sites.
For example, Amazon suggests that a customer in the market for running shoes could ask Rufus questions like “What to consider when buying a running shoe?” “What are the differences between trail and street running shoes?” or “Are these durable?”
Customers researching other products could also ask things like “What to consider when buying headphones?” “What should I consider when detailing my car at home?” “What are pure beauty products?” “What do I need for cold weather golf?” and more. Or you can just tell Rufus something you want to do, like, “I want to start an indoor garden.”
AI can also help with product comparisons or make recommendations if you ask things like “What are good Valentine’s Day gifts?” or “What are the best dinosaur toys for a five year old?” After Rufus answers, the client can continue to browse more refined results.
In other words, you can chat with the AI assistant just like you can with other consumer-facing AI chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Bard — the latter of which also includes shopping integrations.
Rufus will initially be available in beta to select US customers within the Amazon mobile app, where it’s launched by tapping a new button in the bottom navigation bar. Customers can both type or speak their questions into the AI’s chat dialog box that appears at the bottom of the screen.
When they’re done, customers can return to the Amazon app by swiping down on their screen to dismiss the chat dialog box back to the bottom of the screen.
Amazon says the beta version will help it improve its product and AI manufacturing initiatives over time.
“It’s still early days for genetic AI, and the technology won’t always get it right,” the company said in a blog post. “We will continue to improve our AI models and refine our responses to continually make Rufus more useful over time. Customers are encouraged to leave feedback by rating their responses with a thumbs up or thumbs down and also have the option to provide free form feedback,” it states.
The company tells us that the chatbot will be ad-free at launch, but additional elements will be added to the Rufus experience over time if they add value for customers.
As the bot was not available for testing, we cannot speak to its effectiveness. But it’s worth noting that Amazon Q’s AI chatbot for business has struggled, that cause hallucinations (false information) and disclosure of confidential data.
Rufus will roll out to other US customers in the “coming weeks.”
