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February 1, 2024 – Amazon is continuing to lean heavily on artificial intelligence. Today, Amazon announced that they’re rolling out a new AI-powered expert shopping assistant. 

The new AI assistant will be called “Rufus,” and according to Amazon, will be “trained on Amazon’s product catalog and information from across the web to answer customer questions on shopping needs, products, and comparisons, make recommendations based on this context, and facilitate product discovery in the same Amazon shopping experience customers use regularly.”

Of course this isn’t a new thing for Amazon. They’ve long used artificial intelligence to help improve the Amazon shopping – and selling – experience. From shopping recommendations, and optimized fulfillment, to Alexa’s ability to voice search their expansive catalog, it’s clear that Amazon is a big believer in AI’s ability to level up the entire online shopping experience. 

Some of the highlights from the recent Amazon Accelerate 2023 conference included Amazon’s New Improved Customer Sentiment Insights which depends on AI to show sellers data-driven insights across all platforms. 

Amazon also released the new View in Your Room. It’s an AI and augmented reality tabletop feature that will help shoppers see if a product will look good in their room.

And that’s not all, Amazon’s new AI capabilities also include helping Amazon sellers write the copy for their product listings.

Introducing Rufus, Amazon’s New AI Assistant

Just starting shopping for a new running headlamp? Amazon’s Rufus can help shoppers at the very top of the funnel. Or, Rufus can answer more pointed questions nearer the purchase end of the funnel, such as “what’s the difference between these two headlamps?”

Amazon says that they’re launching Rufus in beta to a small subset of customers with the intention of progressively rolling it out to the rest of our U.S. customers in the coming weeks.

Amazon says that Rufus will be able to:

• Learn what to look for while shopping product categories
• Shop by occasion or purpose
• Get help comparing product categories
• Find the best recommendations
• Ask questions about a specific product while on a product detail page

As of today, Rufus is being made available to select customers when they next update their Amazon Shopping app. To use Rufus, customers included in the beta offering can simply start typing or speaking their questions into the search bar in Amazon’s mobile app.

It might feel that the modern world is accelerating faster than most of us can keep up. And as usual, Amazon is on the cutting edge of that constant change – not only to grow their bottom line, but to give brands that rely on their platform even more reasons to stick around.

If you’re looking for expert advice on how to implement these new features into your overall business strategy, look no further. Click here to find out more about how Canopy Management’s Amazon experts can help you grow your brand, or to schedule a personalized strategy session.