After extensive testing, Amazon is launching its generative artificial intelligence-powered shopping assistant, Rufus, to all U.S. customers starting today.
The conversational shopping assistant is designed to help customers save time and make more informed purchase decisions, according to Amazon. Rufus will be available in the Amazon shopping app just in time for Prime Day, which takes place on July 16 and 17.
Initially announced in January, Rufus is capable of answering specific questions about products, such as ease of maintenance and material composition. The AI-powered assistant can also provide product recommendations, comparisons, and updates. Additionally, customers can use Rufus to track packages and review past orders. Beyond shopping assistance, Rufus can offer guidance on topics like preparing a soufflé or organizing a summer party, Amazon added.
As the largest cloud provider, Amazon has introduced its own AI training and inferencing chips, along with a platform called Bedrock for developers to create generative AI applications on Amazon Web Services (AWS). However, Amazon has not focused heavily on developing AI products compared to competitors like Google and Microsoft.
Reports last month indicated that Amazon is working on an AI chatbot, internally named “Metis,” to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. This chatbot will be accessible through a web browser and will be powered by one of Amazon’s internal AI models, Olympus, which Business Insider described as more powerful than Amazon’s publicly available AI model, Titan.
In March, Amazon completed a $4 billion investment in AI startup Anthropic, marking its largest investment in an external company to date. Anthropic uses AWS as its primary cloud provider, and Amazon stated that the startup would utilize its AI chips to build, train, and deploy future models.