Amazon India Rolls Out AI-powered Shopping Assistant ‘Rufus’

Amazon India has introduced its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered shopping assistant, ‘Rufus,’ to the Indian market. Currently in beta mode, Rufus is available to a select group of customers, with plans for a broader rollout in the coming weeks. 

The assistant is designed to enhance the shopping experience by offering personalised product recommendations, shopping list advice, product category comparisons and insights from customer reviews.

Rufus operates on an internal large language model (LLM) specialised for shopping, drawing on Amazon's extensive data, including its product catalog, customer reviews and community discussions. The AI assistant first made its debut in the United States in February 2024, where it was later made widely available to all customers by July.

Amazon has acknowledged that Rufus is still in its early stages, with the technology not always providing perfect responses. The company has committed to continuous improvement of the AI models, encouraging users to provide feedback through thumbs-up or thumbs-down ratings and freeform comments. 

Rufus can be accessed via a chat dialogue on the bottom right of the navigation bar, where users can ask questions, explore suggested queries and engage in follow-up interactions.

The launch of Rufus comes as a significant move for Amazon, especially with the festive season sales approaching in India. The introduction of Rufus also follows the release of Flipkart’s AI-powered shopping assistant, Flippi, which was launched in October 2023 using OpenAI’s ChatGPT.