Amazon has released an artificial intelligence shopping assistant named "Rufus", named after the company's mascot corgi. The new chatbot is trained on Amazon's product library and customer reviews, as well as information from the web, and can answer questions about products, conduct comparisons, provide recommendations and more.
Rufus is still in beta and is only available to "some users" and will be rolled out to more users in the coming weeks. If you can get into the beta, you can launch Amazon's mobile app and open a chat with Rufus by typing or speaking a question into the search bar. A Rufus chat window appears at the bottom of the screen, which you can expand to get answers to your questions, select suggested questions, or ask additional questions.
Amazon began using an artificial intelligence chatbot to answer questions earlier this month, and it started appearing on some users' product pages. The company says Rufus can answer questions like "What's the difference between trail running shoes and road running shoes?" or "What's a good gift for Valentine's Day?" You can also ask questions about specific products on Amazon, such as "Is this jacket machine washable?" The chatbot will provide answers using information from product listings, customer reviews, and community Q&A.
As the video embedded above shows, Rufus' suggested questions will show up even if you do a simple search like "coffee pot."