Key Takeaways
- Rufus is an AI assistant in the Amazon shopping app and website. It uses advanced AI to help customers shop faster and more easily, also bringing helpful information and product recommendations.
- Rufus predicts what each customer might need by using their shopping activity. It provides personalized answers and product suggestions based on the conversation.
- Rufus runs on Amazon Bedrock, a service that makes advanced AI models available to businesses. It uses advanced language models like Anthropic’s, Claude, Sonnet, Amazon, Nova, and a custom model developed by Amazon. These language models are computer programs trained to understand and generate human-like text. Rufus combines information from Amazon’s product catalog, customer reviews, community questions and answers, forums, and web sources to deliver a new level of AI shopping experience.
Since launching Rufus last year, we’ve worked quickly to make it the best AI shopping assistant. It’s now smarter, more capable, and more helpful in conversations. They’ve improved their intelligence, reasoning, and performance. These updates have boosted its knowledge about shopping product research and recommendations. We’ve added over 50 technical upgrades and new features to make Roof faster and more useful, helping customers save time and money.
Our AI shopping assistant has helped customers billions of times. We continue to improve our core technology and expand our understanding of products and customer preferences with a real-time system. It uses different models through Amazon Bedrock, including Anthropic Claude, Sonnet, Amazon Nova, and a custom model. This lets us serve hundreds of millions of users and choose the best model for each question. Rufus also uses retrieval-augmented generation to gather insights and recommendations from sources such as The New York Times, USA Today, Good Housekeeping, and Vogue when answering questions about products and trends.
Our AI assistant can solve customer problems and answer a wide range of questions at any stage of the shopping journey, exhibiting flexibility, intelligence, and multistep reasoning. It can quickly and seamlessly handle everything from broad questions that inform a shopping trip (what’s the weather in Rome in April?) to highly specific questions about product details (what’s the battery life on this product?). This versatility enables our in-store shopping assistant to serve as both a knowledgeable shopping consultant for high-level problem-solving and product discovery and a discerning product expert capable of providing comprehensive comparisons, identifying similar items, and answering granular product questions.
More than 250,000,000 customers have used Rufus this year. Monthly average users are up 149%, and interactions are up 210% over the past year. Customers who use it while shopping are over 60% more likely to make a purchase during that shopping trip. Our shopping assistant is easy for customers to find in our store. It’s featured in the Amazon shopping app on desktop and throughout our store, including on the homepage, product detail pages, and in the Amazon Lens live experience. To start chatting with our AI assistant, type natural language queries into the chat bar or tap the microphone to speak.
We’ve built and continue to improve our in-store AI assistant to act as your personal shopping expert. By learning your preferences, it streamlines product discovery, compares options and prices, supports smart decisions, and speeds up tasks, said Rajiv Mehta, Vice President of Search and Dialogue-based shopping at Amazon. “Our goal: save you time and money and simplify online shopping with real-time info and expert insights across thirty-five categories.”
A Shopping Experience Customized to Your Preferences and Habits
Our AI assistant remembers your account details and adapts to your shopping activity. It gives answers and suggests products, tailored to your interests like trail running, art, fashion, or documentaries. If you indicate young sons who love sports, a golden retriever that sheds, or a preference for organic produce, it factors this in. Ask Rufus for holiday gifts, and it suggests sports books, themed Xbox games, or athletic clothing. Ask about the Roomba, and it highlights its effectiveness on pet hair. When grocery shopping for pasta, it spotlights organic tomatoes.
Chat with our AI assistant to quickly reorder previous purchases or items you viewed. For example, just say, “Reorder everything we used to make pumpkin.” I browsed yesterday. Rufus streamlines your current shopping by connecting your past activity, suggesting alternatives when needed, and adding items to your cart for your review before checkout.
Ask the assistant what shopping details it remembers about you. Add information to personalize suggestions or correct errors in simple conversation. Soon, it will enhance recommendations by factoring in your activity across Kindle, Prime Video, and Audible, not just store shopping.
Smarter Ways to Search With Text and Images
Rufus now offers powerful text and visual search tools to help you solve problems and find ideas faster. Search for products by activity, event, or purpose, like planning a golf day, baking a cake, hosting a party, or buying school supplies. Rufus quickly suggests categories or items to add to your cart. For example, ask, “What items do I need to host a Frozen-themed party for my daughter?” Rufus instantly finds decorations, tableware, cake toppers, games, and party favors. Select items individually or let Rufus add them all. Pull your cart automatically.
Our AI assistant helps you discover products from your favorite influencers’ storefronts. Just ask it to find a specific one, like “find Paige De Sorbo’s storefront.” Rufus also finds millions of products beyond Amazon’s store. Search any brand: Rufus shows Amazon listings and other sellers’ options. You’ll see a “Buy for me” button if Amazon can buy the item for you, or a “Shop direct” button to finish your purchase on the seller’s website.
If you use iOS and like handwriting your shopping lists, you can now take a photo, upload it, and our AI assistant will add the items to your Amazon cart. You can also upload photos and ask our AI assistant to find similar products or help with a problem. For example, upload a photo of a stained rug and ask, “How do I remove this coffee stain?” Rufus will examine the fabric and recommend the best cleaning supplies. Android users will get these features soon.
Save Money With Price Tracking, Price Alerts, Auto Buying, and Find Great Deals.
Our AI shopping assistant now lets you track prices for 30 or 90 days so you can quickly see past prices and check if you are getting a good deal. Just ask Rufus for the price history when looking at an item. You can also set a price alert to be notified when a product reaches your target price. Prime members can ask our AI assistant to auto-buy an item at a set price. The assistant checks prices, makes the purchase with your default settings, and sends you a notification. You’ll have 24 hours to cancel if you change your mind. Auto-buy requests last for six months or until cancelled. Customers can save about 20% per purchase on average.
You can use our shopping assistant to search by price and find items within your budget, like men’s jeans and a $40 or best choice under $15. Rufus finds deals from Amazon’s huge selection and brings you personalized offers daily, including during big events like Prime Day, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday. You’ll find the best deals in-store and in your favorite categories, plus get offers based on your browsing, cart, and wish list.
Quick And Easy Customer Service
Our AI assistant is available 24/7 to help track packages, answer order questions, explain returns and refunds, and guide replacements for damaged items. It can also assist with order changes, cancellations, or returns. Additionally, it helps with account settings, payment and billing, login and security, and finding support resources. If you need more help, it connects you with a live representative.
AI is changing how you shop. We’re committed to making Rufus even more helpful. So try our AI assistant next time you shop on Amazon for a better, faster experience.
Source: Amazon’s next-gen AI assistant for shopping is now even smarter, more capable, and more helpful
