Back in February, with ChatGPT fever dazzling the tech world, Amazon rolled out Rufus, its own chatbot, to select customers using its app.
Now the company is satisfied enough with its performance that it’s available to all American customers just in time for next week’s Prime Day — although it maintains a beta label, suggesting some weirdness may still occur. Despite this, Amazon says it’s “like having a shopping assistant with you any time you’re in our store.”
Named after two former employees’ Welsh Corgi who was a fixture of the office in the ’90s, Rufus is designed to reduce the legwork required to pick the right product from an Amazon shop by answering questions about your specific needs.
That means you can ask general questions while fishing for ideas (e.g.: “what do I need for a summer party?”) or prompts for which you need a more specific answer (“should I get trail shoes or running shoes?”).
While such general questions could easily be answered by a bit of Google research, it gets more useful when you’re mulling the pros and cons of a specific product. On a product page, you could ask something like “is this coffee maker easy to clean?” and Rufus will dig up answers sourced via the information on the page, from the product listing to customer reviews.
While undoubtedly a timesaver, you should be careful about reliability here. We’ve all seen listings with mistakes in product descriptions, and it’s no secret that Amazon — like all major online retailers — has a problem with fake astroturfed reviews pushed by unscrupulous vendors to boost their products. It’s important to remember that Rufus is merely summarizing existing data in an easy-to-consume manner, and if that data is faulty, then Rufus’ answer will be too.
One area where Rufus will stick purely to the facts is in specific questions relating to your account, however. You can ask questions about upcoming orders (“when is my dehumidifier arriving?”) or queries regarding your past activity (“when did I last order batteries?”).
If you’re in the United States, you can try Rufus out now. Just make sure your Amazon app is updated to the latest version, then tap the Rufus icon in the navigation bar — it’s the two colored chat bubbles with a sparkle icon above them. You can either select an existing prompt or type in your own esoteric question to test Rufus’ mettle.
It’s certainly handy that Rufus is arriving ahead of next week’s Prime Day, but we’d still recommend doing your own research before making any big purchases. Source independent reviews and check in on pricing history to make sure all is what it seems.
Our reporters will be going through Amazon with a fine-tooth comb sorting the wheat from the chaff all next week, but if you want to get in early, we’ve already found dozens of bargains available to Prime members right now.
