Meet Rufus, Amazon’s new AI shopping assistant

Amazon is among the companies that has iterated a lot when it comes to artificial intelligence. The US-based giant continues to develop new AI tools, especially now that AI is the main buzzword in the tech world.

The latest AI-powered feature introduced by Amazon is Rufus, an AI assistant that’s supposed to help users with their shopping sprees. As the biggest retailer in the United States, it’s only fitting for Amazon to launch such a product.

According to Amazon, Rufus has been trained on its product catalog, customer reviews, community Q&As, as well as information from the web. The AI shopping assistant has been specifically designed to answer customer questions on a wide range of shopping needs and products. Rufus can even provide comparisons and make recommendations based on conversational context.

Rufus is now available in beta, but Amazon will be starting to roll it out to customers in waves, beginning with a small subset of customers in the United States via the mobile app. Rufus will eventually be rolled out to the rest of the US customers in the coming weeks, Amazon says.

If you’re interested in checking this one out, here are some of Rufus’ key features:

• 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

To start using Rufus, simply start typing or speaking your question into the search bar in Amazon’s mobile app and the shopping assistant chat dialog box will pop up at the bottom of the screen. Keep in mind that this is only available for select customers in the US while it’s in beta.