Amazon is now introducing AI to help you buy the right hiking shoes or phone: How it works

Shopping is the latest way artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to make a difference, and Amazon is bringing the feature to its customers. In fact, you now have an AI chatbot called Rufus that helps buyers choose the right product based on their needs and budget. Amazon claims that Rufus will improve the shopping experience, and we expect the same from an AI chatbot that appears to have access to Amazon shopping content.

Amazon also trained its AI chatbot based on more detailed information available from its product catalog, customer reviews, and the internet. The company has been slow to roll out availability and beta releases. U.S. users of the mobile app tried out the AI ​​chatbot, and Amazon will expand its reach in other countries in the coming months.

Amazon AI Shopping Chatbot: What It Is

Amazon developed a large language model (LLM) that played an important role in the genesis of Rufus. As we said, the company has trained Rufus using its existing content, including customer reviews, which should be enough to help you with questions and details about any of the products available on the platform. Artificial intelligence has moved beyond regular chatbots, but Amazon’s integration with Rufus feels dated because you don’t have a dedicated tab/button to activate the chatbot, let alone use voice control to command it to open. Offering it on a mobile app should have made it possible, but Amazon seems to want to be cautious about how its AI model works.

Amazon Rufus AI chatbot: How it works

Amazon says customers can summon Rufus to ask questions like “which headphones to buy and what to consider.” The company’s artificial intelligence technology means the details Rufus shares sound like a conversation. The chatbot will then use its trained knowledge to provide you with in-depth details about the product and which one is best for the buyer.

They can even compare if you have two options and are having a hard time choosing. These queries can be made in text or audio format, but Rufus can currently only respond in text form. You can enable Rufus by typing into the search tab and turn off the AI ​​chatbot by tapping anywhere on the screen.

It goes without saying that artificial intelligence has huge potential in the field of e-commerce, and Amazon hopes to rely on the popularity of this technology to attract more people to sign up for Rufus and eventually give it wider availability.