Amazon introduced Rufus – an AI shopping assistant

Amazon debuted Rufus, an AI shopping assistant in its mobile app

Amazon has introduced Rufus, an AI-powered shopping assistant integrated into its mobile app, initially launching in beta for a subset of U.S. customers. Rufus is designed to assist users in product discovery, comparisons, and recommendations by leveraging Amazon's extensive product catalog and information from the web. The AI chatbot, described as a generative AI experience, is trained on various data sources, including product catalogs, customer reviews, community Q&As and publicly available web data. While Amazon has not disclosed specific websites, it mentions using publicly available data from across the web. The company developed an internal specialized Language Model (LLM) for shopping to power Rufus.

Customers can engage with Rufus through the mobile app, asking questions related to their shopping needs, whether they are exploring options, seeking advice, or looking for specific details about products. For instance, a user in search of running shoes might inquire about considerations for buying them or the differences between trail and road running shoes. Rufus extends its support to a wide range of product categories, providing information on topics like headphone selection, home car detailing, clean beauty products, cold weather golf essentials, and more. Additionally, Rufus can assist with product comparisons and offer recommendations, contributing to Amazon's ongoing efforts to enhance the overall shopping experience on its platform. The expansion of Rufus to more users is planned in the coming weeks.