©B4LLS via Canva.com | Credit: Amazon
Amazon is launching its first AI-powered shopping assistant to empower mobile shoppers to search by query with answers delivered in a conversational context.
Called “Rufus” after the dog of two early employees, the chatbot is based on a large language model trained on the company’s product catalog, customer reviews, community questions, and “information from across the web.”
Under its traditional search bar, shoppers manually type keywords or product names, seeking either a specific item or looking for one based on its features.
Rufus lets customers ask specific questions but also those that are vaguely worded to better support discovery. Customers can learn what to look for in product categories, shop for special occasions, get help comparing product categories, get recommendations, and ask specific questions about products.
In a LinkedIn post, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy offered a number of examples of questions the AI bot can handle:
- “What is important to consider when buying headphones?”
- “What’s the difference between trail and running road shoes?”
- “What are the best Valentine’s Day gifts?”
- “Is this pickleball racquet good for beginners?”
"Rufus lets customers ask shopping journey questions like, ‘What is the best golf ball to use for better spin control?’ or ‘Which are the best cold weather rain jackets?’ and get thoughtful explanations for what matters and recommendations on products," Jassy said last week on the retailer’s fourth-quarter analyst call.
He explained, "You can carry on a conversation with Rufus on other related or unrelated questions, and it retains context coherently. You can sift through our rich product pages by asking Rufus questions on any product features, and it’ll return answers quickly."
To use Rufus, customers start typing or speaking their questions into the search bar in Amazon’s mobile app, and a Rufus chat dialog box appears at the bottom of their screen. Customers can expand the chat dialog box to see answers to their questions, tap on suggested questions, and ask follow-up questions in the chat dialog box.
Customers can dismiss Rufus to return to their traditional search results by swiping down to send the chat dialog box back to the bottom of their screen. Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky said on the analyst call, "The way we're rolling it out is that it is additive to the current shopping experience." He also said that customers can still search in the search bar if they know what they want.
If Rufus gains traction, Amazon could play a bigger role in the research phase of the shopper journey as well as “take ad sales away from Google and social media sites, where companies try to influence what customers decide to buy,” according to the New York Times.
Rufus became available in beta to a small group of users in the U.S. on Feb. 1, with a broader rollout planned in the coming weeks.
A PowerReviews survey of about 8,000 U.S. consumers conducted in March 2023 found 50% starting their online shopping journey at Amazon, followed by Google at 31.5%. For Gen Z respondents, Google bested Amazon (38% versus 36%, respectively). Gen Z was also the most likely group to start their shopping journey on social media (5%).
Of all respondents, 56% consider search results (on Google and other search engines) when making purchase decisions, with 63% saying they use search engine results to learn about products they haven’t purchased before.
Last spring, Microsoft and Google released chatbots and AI tools for their search engines, highlighting shopping-related uses. At the start of this year, Walmart unveiled its own generative AI shopping assistant in partnership with Microsoft.