January 25, 2023
Amazon Debuts Conversational AI Shopping Assistant As Ad Sales Climb
- by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, February 1, 2024
Amazon announced Rufus, a new generative AI-powered conversational shopping assistant, on Thursday -- as the company also reported its fourth-quarter 2023 earnings, revealing stunning results for its advertising business and cloud computing.
Rufus has been trained on Amazon's product catalog, customer reviews, community question and answers, as well as information from across the web.
The chatbot launched Thursday to a subset of U.S. customers in beta, with plans to add more users in the weeks ahead.
Customers will have the ability to chat with Rufus inside Amazon’s mobile app to get help with finding products, performing product comparisons, and getting recommendations on what to buy.
The customer-facing application can answer questions related to products and services offered by Amazon merchants, whether the consumer is at the start of their shopping journey or toward the end as they prepare to check out.
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The AI chatbot began appearing for some consumers earlier this month. Customers can conduct more general product research on Amazon by asking questions like “what should I consider when buying running shoes?” or “what is the differences between trail and road running shoes?”
The chatbot will use the information from product listings,
customer reviews, and community Q&As to provide an answer.
Customers are encouraged to leave feedback by rating answers with a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. They also have the option to provide what Amazon calls "freeform feedback," too.
Last month, Walmart expanded the rollout of its AI-powered tool on iOS that lets shoppers search for products by topic rather than using the product's brand name. The company called the assistant “customer’s concierge,” because it allows consumers to search based on themes or idea. It returns text and images across a range of relevant categories.
Asking for advice on what to serve at a Super Bowl party could return recommendations for drinks, chips and wings, and a wide-screen TV.
Amazon also released earnings Thursday, reporting $170 billion for Q4 2023, signaling the acceleration of its ad and cloud-computing businesses. Ad sales rose 27% year over year to $14.7 billion. Amazon Web Services (AWS) rose 13% to $24.2 billion.
