Amazon has launched Rufus, a GenAI-powered shopping assistant, in beta for customers in India. This AI assistant is designed to improve the shopping experience by helping users discover products, answering their shopping-related queries, and offering personalized recommendations based on individual preferences. Currently, Rufus is available to a select group of customers, with plans to gradually roll out the feature to all users in India in the coming weeks.

Amazon has developed an internal language model specifically designed for shopping which is trained on product catalogue data and customer-generated content from reviews and community Q&As that helps shoppers find what they’re looking for, it said in its blogpost. Rufus is trained on data from a variety of sources, including licensed and proprietary data, open-source datasets, and publicly available information. Rufus is available in 13 Indian languages Hindi, Telugu and Tamil. Amazon introduced Hindi in 2018 followed by 6 other Indian languages for customer service and shopping.

Customers can shop in eight languages, including English. The app's performance has been optimized to function smoothly across different internet speeds and phone configurations, ensuring it remains fast and accessible for everyone. Features such as Alexa voice shopping, summarized reviews and product videos are tailored to meet diverse user preferences, enhancing the overall shopping experience.

Rufus is now part of Amazon's online marketplace. This generative AI-powered expert utilizes Amazon's expansive product catalogue, customer reviews, and other relevant information to provide customers with personalized recommendations and help them make well-informed purchasing decisions. "With Rufus, customers can shop alongside a generative AI-powered expert that knows Amazon's selection, has information from Amazon's extensive product catalogue, customer reviews, and more, and bring it all together to help them make more informed purchase decisions", the blogpost added.

On the other hand, Alexa, a personal assistant, is designed to make customers' daily lives easier by assisting with various tasks and offering an alternative way to shop on Amazon. Alexa can help users add items to their shopping list, reorder essential household products quickly, and find deals on items in their cart or wishlist.