Amazon India announces beta launch of gen AI assistant Rufus on its e-commerce platform

US technology major Amazon has announced the beta launch of its generative Artificial Intelligence (gen AI)-powered assistant Rufus on the e-commerce app in India.

Amit Agarwal, senior vice president (emerging markets), Amazon confirmed the soft launch of Rufus on the X platform.

Rufus was first launched earlier this year in February in select markets including the US. It is similar to Alexa on Echo smart speakers at home. It will be able to do the heavy work of researching a product the customer wants to buy. It can help with comparing an item of different brands and this way, he/she can make an informed decision to buy it or not.

For over 25 years, Amazon has been a leader in using AI to personalize your shopping journey. From product recommendations to Alexa's voice shopping, we're constantly innovating. Now, with Rufus, we're taking things a step further

Agarwal Amit Agarwal, senior vice president (of emerging markets) at Amazon

Rufus can also help find the best deals available on a particular product on Amazon. Also, it can suggest top-selling items on its platform.

For instance, if you are looking for a laptop, you just have to tap on the search tab and type-- 'Suggest me a new laptop with 16GB RAM and latest chipsets'. It will list out the PCs with such configurations.

Also, if you are shopping for gifts for Deepavali -- user can ask 'Give me the best Deepavali (Diwali) gift option for her or him'. It can list various categories of gifts.

And, if you have zeroed in on a particular product but want more details, it can pull out the information instantly. For instance, you are viewing a jacket and want to know if it is machine washable or has to be dry cleaned. Just ask-- 'Does this jacket support machine washable or need dry cleaning?' It can instantly go to the product details section and flash it on the screen.

Amazon launches AI assistant Rufus beta in India.

Product research on e-commerce sites (& even on OTT platforms for finding the right TV series), is tedious and time-consuming work. More often than not, people lose interest and decide to postpone the purchase.

With the new AI assistant Rufus, it will be easy to find the product, quickly compare with multiple items and reduce the time taken to zero in on the right product and make the purchase.

For now, Rufus is being made available to select customers when they next update their Amazon shopping app. To use Rufus, customers in the beta can simply click on the icon in the bottom right-hand corner on Amazon’s mobile app and a Rufus chat dialogue box will appear on the screen. Customers can expand the chat dialogue box to see answers to their queries.

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