Amazon enters the chatbot battle with a shopping tool
Amazon entered the fray against consumer chatbots on Thursday, announcing a new personal shopping assistant with artificial intelligence, as the company races to catch up with other tech giants.
Customers can ask the tool, Rufus, product questions directly in the search bar of the company's mobile app, Amazon said in a blog post. The AI will then respond in a conversational tone. Examples given in the announcement included comparing different types of coffee makers, gift recommendations, and a follow-up question about the durability of running shoes.
Rufus will be available to a “small group of customers” starting Thursday, the post said, and will be rolled out to additional customers in the coming weeks. Amazon declined to provide more details on how many people will be part of the tool's initial release.
Amazon is trying to shake off the perception that it is lagging behind the AI wave unleashed more than a year ago, when startup OpenAI released its ChatGPT chatbot.
Microsoft and Google released chatbots and AI tools for their search engines last spring, often emphasizing shopping-related uses, and startups like Perplexity have tried to redesign the search experience with AI in mind.
In the fall, Amazon released a business chatbot called Q for customers of its cloud computing division, and the company said it was working to make its Alexa voice assistant more chatty.
Amazon's search bar and the top results it produces are among the most important placements in online retail. They have been the subject of antitrust investigations, and the product ads in search results are the basis for the company's thriving advertising business.
The new Rufus tool is “trained on Amazon's extensive product catalog, customer reviews, community questions and answers, and information from the web,” the company said.
Amazon allows its employees to bring their dogs to work, and a dog named Rufus was one of the first to wander the offices in the early days of the company.
In addition, Amazon reported strong fourth-quarter results on Thursday, fueled in part by the holiday season.
Revenue in the quarter was $170 billion, up 17 percent from a year earlier. The company had $10.6 billion in profits. The results exceeded analyst expectations and Amazon's own forecast.
The services the company provides to third-party sellers on its marketplace, including fulfillment and shipping, and the advertising it offers to brands and sellers, had particularly strong quarters.
Investors are keeping a close eye on Amazon's most profitable segments: cloud computing and advertising. Advertising revenue grew 27 percent to $14.7 billion, and Amazon Web Services grew 13 percent to $24.2 billion, right in line with investor expectations.