Amazon announces AI shopping assistant called Rufus

Amazon launched a new generative AI shopping assistant, Rufus, on Thursday. The chatbot is trained on Amazon's product catalog, customer reviews, community Q&As and "information from across the web."

The tool is designed to help users search and shop for products. Shoppers type or speak a question into the search bar in Amazon's mobile app and a chat window will appear at the bottom of their screen. Users can ask conversational questions such as, "What are the differences between trail and road running shoes?" or "Compare drip and pour-over coffee makers."

Rufus launched Thursday in beta to a small subset of U.S. users in Amazon's mobile app. Amazon plans to progressively roll out Rufus to the rest of U.S. customers in the coming weeks.

Amazon has launched numerous generative AI tools and services in recent months, capitalizing on the hype sparked by OpenAI's ChatGPT. The company has tested AI tools to answer shoppers' questions and summarize reviews, as well as an AI feature to help third-party sellers write listings. Outside of its retail business, Amazon has introduced Q, a chatbot for businesses, and Bedrock, a generative AI service for cloud customers.

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