Amazon has recently introduced Rufus, an AI-powered shopping assistant embedded within its mobile app, aimed at providing practical assistance to users navigating the online marketplace. This tool is not merely a chatbot; it operates as a generative AI experience, extensively trained on Amazon’s product catalog, customer reviews, and web-based information.

Rufus is designed to assist users throughout their shopping journey, offering guidance on product features, making comparisons, and delivering personalized recommendations. Amazon emphasizes that the AI model has been fine-tuned using a new, specialized Language Model (LLM) dedicated to shopping, utilizing both internal and publicly available data.

The beta release of Rufus is currently available to a limited subset of U.S. customers within the Amazon mobile app. Users can interact with the AI by typing or speaking their queries into the chat dialog box. Amazon encourages users to provide feedback to enhance the AI’s responses, acknowledging that the technology is still in its early stages.

Rufus can address a variety of user queries, ranging from general product considerations to specific questions about durability or usage scenarios. The company envisions the AI assistant as a practical tool for users seeking advice on topics like running shoe selection or headphone purchases.

In addition to its AI-powered shopping assistant, Amazon continues to implement various tools across its platform aimed at improving the overall shopping experience. While Rufus shares similarities with other consumer-facing AI chatbots, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, it stands out with its specialized focus on shopping-related inquiries.

Despite the optimism surrounding Rufus, Amazon acknowledges the ongoing development of generative AI and commits to refining the assistant’s responses over time. The company plans to progressively roll out Rufus to a broader audience of U.S. customers in the coming weeks, emphasizing a customer-centric approach to further improve the tool’s utility.