The jury is still out on whether generative AI is really a game-changer as it promises, but until we find out, every tech company wants to dabble in AI. For some reason, now it's Amazon's turn.
On Thursday, Amazon announced its new generative AI bot, "Rufus" — sorry, a "conversational shopping experience." According to Amazon, Rufus (named after Corgis, Amazon's early employees) were trained on Amazon's product catalog, customer reviews, Q&A, and shopping data from the internet. Theoretically, you should be able to ask Rufus for ideas on what you should buy, how products compare to each other, and suggestions for new products you haven't heard of before.
Amazon highlighted five use cases for Rufus in particular:
Learn more about a product or product category when you're searching for something to buy so you can make more informed purchasing decisions.
Search for products based on the occasion or purpose to find products that are relevant to the situation.
Compare the product assortment so you can choose between drip and pour coffee makers.
Ask for recommendations for products based on what rufus considers to be the "best" option.
Ask questions about the product when you visit the product page. Ideally, Rufus will find answers to specific questions about the product from the product page faster than you can.
Am I sure rufus will be particularly useful? No. As we know, AI can be impressive, but it can also be chaotic and easy to make things up. It would be a shame if a major purchase decision was made based on the "insights" of Rufus, which ultimately turned out to be unfounded. Still, I believe Amazon is promising: Alexa isn't the shopping assistant the company wants, as most users rely on it to query "What's the weather like?" And other issues that don't make money. I'm sure Amazon would be very happy if Rufus could motivate more users to make more purchases.
Of course, Rufus isn't Amazon's first AI project. The company has dabbled in AI-generated review summaries, and they even allow sellers to generate product titles and summaries using the tool. Well.