Amazon has introduced Rufus, a shopping assistant powered by generative AI. Rufus aims to simplify the Amazon shopping process by providing intelligent assistance, personalised recommendations, and seamless product discovery for users.

Key features of Rufus include the ability to guide customers on what to look for in various product categories, helping them shop by occasion or purpose, facilitating comparisons between product categories, and providing personalised recommendations based on specific queries. 

Moreover, customers can also use Rufus to ask questions about individual products while viewing their detail pages. For instance, “is this pickleball paddle good for beginners?”, or “is this jacket machine washable?”

Trained on Amazon’s extensive product catalog, customer reviews, community Q&As, and web information, Rufus is designed to answer a variety of customer queries, offer product comparisons, and provide tailored recommendations.

The rollout begins with a beta release to a small subset of U.S. customers using Amazon’s mobile app, with a progressive expansion to additional users in the coming weeks.

To access Rufus, beta customers can update their Amazon Shopping app, type or speak their questions into the search bar, and a Rufus chat dialog box will appear at the bottom of their screen, offering answers and suggestions.

Users are encouraged to provide feedback by rating answers with a thumbs up or down and offering freeform feedback to contribute to the continuous improvement of Rufus.