Amazon introduced chatbot Rufus, an assistant who promises a a new conversational shopping experience powered by generative AI. Assistant launched in beta within the Amazon mobile app for a small group users in the United States and will gradually roll out to other customers in the coming weeks. We assume that it will eventually reach all markets where the company has a presence.

Amazon says the Rufus chatbot is an expert shopping assistant in Amazon’s product catalog and information on the site. This trained to answer customer questions about your shopping needs, products and comparisons, create contextual recommendations and facilitate product discovery.

Assistant has been trained with millions of products in the company’s catalog, its own and third-party articles, as well as customer reviews, questions and answers from the community. It aims to answer customer queries related to their shopping needswhether when launching a preview by looking at general offers, trying to narrow down the options, or when asking more specific questions.

How the Rufus chatbot will work

Its operation will be similar to other consumer-oriented AI assistants, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Bard, which also includes product purchase integration. Customers who use the Amazon mobile app They will be able to type or express their questions in the AI ​​chat dialog which appears at the bottom of the screen. Once done, customers can return to the Amazon app by swiping down the screen and closing the dialog.

Amazon showed several examples of use and suggests that a customer looking for running shoes could ask Rufus questions such as “what to consider when buying running shoes?”, “what are the differences between mountain and road running shoes?” or “Are they durable?”

Other general shopping questions are: “what to consider when buying headphones?”, “what are clean beauty products?”, “what do I need to play golf in cold weather?”?. Also more direct questions like “I want to start an indoor garden.”

AI will also be able to help create product comparison or make recommendations if you’re asking things like “what are good Valentine’s Day gifts?” or “what are the best dinosaur toys for a 5 year old”? After Rufus responds, the customer can continue browsing for more accurate results.

There is improvement ahead of us

Amazon has created a new and specific Large Language Model (LLM) specialized for shopping, and remember that “has been using artificial intelligence for over 25 years to improve the customer experience” and examples are deliveries with drones or the Alexa assistant.

AI for sellers too. A few months ago, Amazon introduced a new set of generative AI tools aimed at sellers that the seller says will simplify the process of creating product listings and customer service.

Despite its experience, Amazon says the beta will help it improve the product and its generative AI initiatives: “It’s still early days for generative AI, and the technology won’t always work exactly as it’s supposed to”acknowledged in the announcement. “We will continue to refine our AI models and fine-tune responses to make the Rufus chatbot more useful over time.”. The company encourages customers to comment on their experience with this shopping assistant.