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Amazon Introduces a Shopping Assistant: Meet Rufus
February 2, 2024
Amazon has introduced a new shopping assistant to help shoppers make better choices on its platform. Meet Rufus, programmed to answer customer questions, make comparisons and recommendations, and help find items.
In a press release, the company announced Rufus’ launch in beta to a small subset of customers. Only some of Amazon’s users will experience the assistant’s help.
However, Rufus will be rolled out to additional customers in the United States. This should occur within the coming weeks.
The press release states, “Rufus is a generative AI-powered expert shopping assistant trained on Amazon’s extensive product catalog, customer reviews, community Q&As, and information from across the web to answer customer questions on a variety of shopping needs and products, provide comparisons, and make recommendations based on conversational context.”
Rufus will help shoppers narrow down the millions of choices within the app to purchase products. It will also answer customer queries, according to the press release.
Amazon claims that the shopping assistant will improve the customer experience by helping them find the best products to suit a particular need. Rufus is integrated into the same Amazon shopping experience customers have come to expect from the company.
Suggested questions for Rufus will appear even if you’re just doing a simple search. A Rufus chat window will pop up at the bottom of your screen, which you can expand to get an answer, select suggested questions, or ask another question.
Over the past year, the company has rolled out several new AI-powered capabilities within Amazon’s shopping experience. These include review highlights, size guidance, and insights, along with a feature to help third-party sellers create listings.
Per CNBC, CEO Andy Jassy has said the company plans to incorporate generative AI across all its businesses. Outside of its main retail business, “Amazon has introduced Q, a chatbot for businesses, and Bedrock, a generative AI service for cloud customers.”
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