Amazon is stepping into an era of AI-powered shopping with a new AI Chatbot, Rufus. This new AI Chatbot is currently available in beta, to a small group of users in the US. The wider rollout across the country will happen in the coming weeks.
This new AI Chatbot for e-commerce trains from Amazon’s catalog, customer reviews, community Q&As on product pages, and as the company vaguely mentions, “Information from across the web”.
According to Amazon, Rufus will help the customers by providing product recommendations and comparisons. They designed this Chatbot to answer certain search questions including “What to consider when buying running shoes? And “What are the differences between trail and road running shoes?’’. Users should make sure that they are usually punching the search engine like Google, not Amazon itself.
Users use the AI tool by typing their questions into a search bar on the platform’s mobile app. Rufus will start a conversation in a chat dialogue box, allowing customers to ask follow-up questions. Other features of the bot include helping users shop for specific occasions or purposes and providing recommendations for specific people and products. For example, if you have a five-year-old kid and you want to buy a dinosaur toy for him, a user can ask Rufus at Amazon to search for the best toy for their kid.
While people exploring this Chatbot many questions arise here- like, why it is called “Rufus” especially? It’s somewhat reminiscent of a “Grok” moment. A Bloomberg reporter, Matt Day, noted that it could be linked to an early Amazon employee who had a Dog of the same name Rufus, who supposedly used to visit the company’s offices in its early days.
AI Shopping Assistant
Rufus is Amazon’s newest AI-focused shopping tool, but it’s not the only one. The tech giant has recently been flooded with AI-generated summaries of products, a feature announced last August.
Many other companies have joined the trend of AI shopping assistants. For instance, Google Search’s AI image generator lets you imagine products and shop the real versions, and the company’s Virtual try-on (VTO) tool intends to make shopping more diverse and size-inclusive. Other shopping giants like Walmart have introduced similar AI-powered features that provide recommendations and engage in conversation with customers.
So, now make your shopping easier and search for your products anytime without wasting time searching thousands of products while using this new AI Chatbot Rufus.