📱 Amazon launches Rufus AI chatbot
Amazon announced that its AI-powered shopping assistant, Rufus, is now available to all U.S. customers in the Amazon mobile app. Rufus is designed to help customers find products, perform product comparisons, and get buying recommendations. Initially launched in beta, it was available to select customers. Now, after testing it with "tens of millions of questions," it is available to everyone. First announced in February, Rufus has been trained on Amazon's extensive product catalog, customer reviews, and other public information from around the web.
🛒 How Rufus assists shoppers
Rufus is located at the bottom right of the app’s main navigation bar. Customers can ask Rufus questions like “What to consider when buying headphones?” or “What are clean beauty products?” Rufus can also handle broader requests such as “I want to start an indoor garden,” providing specific product recommendations to accomplish these tasks. During tests, customers often clicked on related questions in the chat window, like asking about the material of a backpack and then wanting to know what other customers say about it.
📈 Rufus’s expanded capabilities
Beyond product recommendations, Rufus can provide information on fashion trends, the latest tech products, and even assist with order details. For instance, a customer asking about a pool umbrella for Florida received information about Florida’s weather and humidity. Rufus also helped users find past orders and track current orders. In tests, Rufus was generally accurate but occasionally limited by Amazon’s catalog.
🔮 Continuous improvements ahead
Amazon acknowledges that Rufus is not perfect. The AI assistant sometimes struggles with questions outside of shopping and its recommendations can be limited by the products available on Amazon. However, Amazon plans to continue improving Rufus, aiming to enhance its accuracy and utility. To access Rufus, customers need the latest version of the Amazon Shopping app, where Rufus can be found on the bottom navigation bar, indicated by an icon with chat bubbles and a sparkle.
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