Amazon introduces AI-powered shopping assistant Rufus; From answering queries to making comparisons, know what it can do

Amazon has unveiled Rufus, an AI-powered shopping assistant, to aid shoppers in comparison shopping and finding answers to complex queries. The assistant is currently available to a select group of customers using Amazon's mobile app.

Rufus was launched on Thursday to “a small subset of customers” who use Amazon’s mobile app, (Amazon)

Amidst the recent boom in AI, Amazon has been making efforts to incorporate this technology into its suite of products and services. A recently surfaced report suggested that the e-commerce giant was looking to supercharge Alexa, its voice assistant, with personalized AI tech, and would also unveil a new subscription model for it, called Alexa Plus. Now, Amazon has announced its latest AI tool in the form of an AI-powered shopping assistant called Rufus.

What is Rufus?

Amazon is adding an artificial intelligence shopping companion to its retail store in an effort to help shoppers comparison shop and seek answers to queries more complicated than a keyword search, as per Bloomberg.

The shopping assistant was launched on Thursday to “a small subset of customers” who use Amazon's mobile app, the online retail giant said in a blog post. The company says users can ask the software what they'd need to start an indoor garden or ask for Valentine's Day recommendations, among other questions. 

For years, shoppers have manually typed keywords or product names into Amazon's search bar, seeking either a specific item or looking for one based on its features. That functionality suddenly seemed out of date with the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT and other generative AI-powered tools capable of surfacing products based on strings of conversational text, and ready to respond with recommendations and comparisons. 

Walmart Inc. last month expanded the rollout of an AI-powered tool that lets shoppers search for products by use cases rather than naming products specifically. The app is available on the Walmart app for iOS users.

(With inputs from Bloomberg)

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