After extensive testing, Amazon has launched its generative AI-powered shopping assistant, Rufus, for all U.S. customers today.
The conversational shopping assistant aims to help customers save time and make informed purchase decisions, as stated by Amazon. Rufus is now available in the Amazon shopping app, coinciding with Prime Day, which runs from July 16 to 17.
Announced in January, Rufus is designed to answer specific product-related questions, such as whether a product is easy to maintain or what material it is made of. The AI assistant can also offer product recommendations, comparisons, and updates. Additionally, customers can use Rufus to track packages and check past orders. Rufus can even assist with unrelated queries, such as what is needed for a soufflé or a summer party.
Amazon, the leading cloud provider, has introduced its own AI training and inferencing chips, along with a platform called Bedrock for developers to build generative AI applications on its AWS cloud service. Despite these developments, Amazon has not focused as heavily on AI product development compared to competitors like Google and Microsoft.
Reports from last month indicate that Amazon is developing an AI chatbot, internally named “Metis,” to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. This chatbot will be accessible via a web browser and powered by Amazon’s internal AI model, Olympus. According to Business Insider, Olympus is more advanced than Amazon’s public AI model, Titan.
In March, Amazon completed a $4 billion investment in AI startup Anthropic, its largest external investment to date. Anthropic uses AWS as its main cloud provider, and Amazon has stated that the startup will utilize its AI chips to build, train, and deploy future AI models.