Amazon unveils “Rufus,” an AI shopping guide that chats you through every purchase

Amazon has introduced “Rufus,” a new generative AI–powered shopping assistant that lives inside the company’s mobile app. Rolling out in beta to a subset of US customers, Rufus is trained on Amazon’s vast product catalog, customer reviews, Q&A threads, and additional information from across the web to answer shopping questions in a conversational way.

Instead of just typing keywords and scanning long result lists, users can ask Rufus things like “Show me a work‑from‑home chair under $400 and explain the differences” or “What do I need to start camping this summer?” Rufus responds with curated product suggestions, plain‑language explanations of pros and cons, and side‑by‑side comparisons tailored to the user’s follow‑up questions.

The goal is to shift online shopping from static search to an interactive dialogue where the assistant helps define needs, narrow options, and justify choices. For now, Rufus is limited to English and a small beta audience, but Amazon plans a broader US rollout over the coming weeks. Given Amazon’s global reach, the experiment is being closely watched as a potential template for how AI assistants could reshape everyday e‑commerce.