Amazon has launched an AI shopping assistant

Amazon has launched an AI-powered shopping assistant – named Rufus – in the UK for the first time.

The new chatbot, which is initially being launched to a subset of customers in Amazon’s mobile app, has been trained on Amazon’s product catalogue and information from across the web to enable it to answer any shopping queries users have.

The US tech giant said Rufus can help shoppers with broad research questions such as “What do I need for making smoothies?” to comparisons between different types of products and even specific questions about individual items.

Rufus was first introduced in the US earlier this year, and is the latest in a ever-growing list of examples where tech firms have looked to build generative AI tools into their services as a way to entice customers.

Generative AI has become the focal point for innovation in the tech sector since the launch of ChatGPT nearly two years ago.

While many firms, including Amazon, have used other forms of artificial intelligence and machine learning to power their products and services for years, the ability of generative AI to create responses and even content from scratch is seen a major step forward.

“Amazon has been using AI very expansively for over 25 years to improve customer experiences,” Amazon said in a blog post about the launch of Rufus.

“The personalised recommendations customers get when they shop on Amazon’s store, the pick-paths in our fulfilment centres, and the conversational capabilities of Alexa are just a few examples of experiences fuelled by AI.

“And we believe generative AI is going to change virtually all customer experiences that we know.

“We are excited about the potential of generative AI and will continue testing new features to make it even easier to find and discover, research and buy products on Amazon’s store.

“We look forward to progressively rolling Rufus out to additional customers in the coming weeks.”

Once available, Rufus will appear as an icon in the bottom corner of the screen within the Amazon Shopping app, with users able to expand the chat box to see answers to their questions, as well as tap on suggested questions and ask follow-up questions.

Amazon confirmed users will be able to return to traditional search results at any time by swiping down to close the chat box.