Amazon is rolling out its new AI companion, affectionately named after an Amazon employee’s dog, which can assist with any potential purchases you might make.
Amazon has been using AI for quite a while, deploying it for tasks such as detecting fake reviews and finding defective products. In February this year, Amazon stepped up and announced a conversational shopping tool based on generative AI that would help shoppers on the company’s eponymous marketplace. After testing it among a small circle of users, the company has today released Rufus for all of its customers in the U.S. market.
Amazon says it has trained Rufus — named after a Welsh corgi that once used to roam its warehouses — on its extensive product catalog, customer reviews, product Q&A, as well as information pulled from the web. It can answer natural language queries such as specific details about a product, make product recommendations, offer suggestions regarding the right product, get updates on cart items, and more.
The core idea is to save shoppers a trip down the confusing settings pages and lose time doing their own web research.
