After several months of testing, Amazon has officially launched its generative artificial intelligence-powered shopping assistant, Rufus, for all U.S. customers today.
The conversational shopping assistant is designed to help customers save time and make more informed purchase decisions, according to Amazon. Rufus is now available in the Amazon shopping app, just in time for Prime Day, which takes place from July 16 to 17.
First announced in January, Rufus can answer specific questions about products, such as whether a product is easy to maintain or what material it’s made of. The AI-powered assistant also provides product recommendations and comparisons, offers product updates, tracks packages, and reviews past orders. Additionally, Rufus can assist with non-shopping-related questions, such as what is needed for making a soufflé or organizing a summer party.
Amazon, as the largest cloud provider, has introduced its own AI training and inferencing chips alongside a platform named Bedrock for developers to build generative AI applications on its Amazon Web Services cloud service. However, the company has not concentrated as heavily on developing AI products as competitors like Google and Microsoft.
Last month, it was reported that Amazon is developing an AI chatbot known internally as “Metis,” aimed to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. According to Business Insider, this chatbot will be accessible through a web browser and powered by one of Amazon’s internal AI models, Olympus. Sources familiar with the matter and an internal document reveal that Olympus is supposedly more powerful than Amazon’s commercially available AI model, Titan.
In addition, Amazon completed a $4 billion investment in AI startup Anthropic this March, marking its largest investment in an external company to date. Anthropic uses Amazon Web Services as its primary cloud provider, and Amazon stated that the startup will use its AI chips to develop, train, and deploy its future models.