After months of testing, Amazon is launching its generative artificial intelligence-powered shopping assistant, Rufus, to all U.S. customers today.
The conversational shopping assistant is designed to help customers save time and make more informed purchase decisions, Amazon stated. Rufus is now available in the Amazon shopping app just in time for Prime Day, which will take place from July 16 to 17.
Announced in January, Rufus can answer specific questions about products, such as their ease of maintenance and the materials from which they are made. The AI assistant can also provide product recommendations and comparisons, offer product updates, track packages, and review past orders. Beyond shopping, Rufus can assist with inquiries such as what ingredients are needed for a soufflé or how to prepare for a summer party, Amazon explained.
Although Amazon is the leading cloud service provider and has developed its own AI training and inferencing chips, along with a platform called Bedrock for building generative AI applications on AWS, the company has not heavily focused on AI product development compared to competitors like Google and Microsoft.
Last month, reports emerged that Amazon is developing an AI chatbot, internally named “Metis,” intended to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The chatbot will be accessible via a web browser and will be powered by Amazon’s internal AI model, Olympus. According to Business Insider, Olympus is more powerful than Amazon’s currently available AI model, Titan.
In March, Amazon finalized its $4 billion investment in AI startup Anthropic, marking its largest investment in an external company to date. Anthropic, which uses AWS as its primary cloud provider, will utilize Amazon’s AI chips to build, train, and deploy its future models, Amazon announced.