Amazon has added an AI assistant tool called Rufus to its shopping platform. The AI is trained on Amazon's extensive catalog of products and information pulled from the internet. It works like any other AI chatbot, but it's integrated directly into the Amazon app. You can ask questions about products and shopping needs, compare different goods, discover new products and much more.

Amazon is currently rolling out Rufus in beta to a small subset of customers in the US only. The e-commerce giant says Rufus will be available to more US customers in the coming weeks. Amazon has a huge public data set from its shopping app to make a customized LLM that can cater to customers' personal needs.

In addition to product catalogs, the company has also used customer reviews and community Q&As to build the Rufus AI chatbot for Amazon. You can ask Rufus general questions like "What should I consider before buying headphones", "What do I need to hike to a remote mountain" or specific ones like "Show me dinosaur toys for a 5-year-old". It also takes into account the context of a product you're looking at and responds accordingly.

To get started, refresh the Amazon app and start typing your question in the search field right away. You can also tap the star-like symbol at the bottom to launch Rufus in the Amazon shopping app. It's worth mentioning that Amazon started AI-generated review highlights last year and it's already available in most regions. Now, with the Rufus AI shopping assistant, Amazon is ready to fully integrate generative AI capabilities into its shopping app.