AI can help everywhere, from your email apps to fast food restaurants. Now Amazon is looking to get involved in the AI revolution with an AI bot called Rufus, which can answer questions, research products, and help you make the right purchasing decisions on Amazon.
Maybe you’re stuck on a gift idea for a special someone in your life, or you need to compare two products. From asking about your active orders to checking the details of something you’re considering buying, Rufus can help, and here’s how to find it.
How Rufus works and where to find it
If you’re familiar with AI chatbots like ChatGPT or Gemini, Rufus follows much the same line. It’s trained to “Amazon’s extensive product catalog, customer reviews, community Q&As, and information from around the web,” which it then searches, connects, and summarizes to respond to your questions.
However, these bots don’t just copy and paste information; they are designed to generate new and original answers, so that (as always with these AI models) mistakes can be made. Amazon says Rufus “may not always get things right,” so it’s worth double-checking important details. Do not assume that everything Rufus sells is 100 percent accurate, or share any private or personal information with it.
If you use the Amazon Shopping app for Android or iOSYou’ll find Rufus to the right of the bottom navigation bar (the Rufus logo consists of two blobs with a star next to them): Tap the button to open a chat window and ask questions. When you are shopping the Amazon websiteyou’ll see the Rufus button on the left side of the top toolbar.
Rufus will immediately make suggestions about questions to ask. Some of these may be related to recent searches or recent purchases. Click or tap one of the suggestions, or enter your own question or prompt, and Rufus will spring into action.
After each answer you will be given the opportunity to ask follow-up questions (Rufus remembers the conversation history) and rate the answers you received (via the thumbs up or thumbs down buttons). You can clear your chat history in Rufus, but only in the app and not on the web: tap the three dots (top right) and then choose Manage chat And Clear chat history.
Questions and directions to try with Rufus
Rufus knows what you’re looking at on the Amazon platform, so you can ask him questions about a product you have on screen. For example, you can ask how much an item weighs, what materials it is made of or what the battery life is like. In some cases, the bot will link directly to something in the listing.
Rufus goes beyond individual product pages and can answer general shopping questions. You may wonder what the best tool is for a particular task, or how two specific items compare, or what a particular item actually does (and how). You can also ask about trends in product categories, and see what’s popular with other buyers, for example.
You can get quite creative with these questions. For example, you might ask about the tools and materials needed to make a garden shed, or about gifts suitable for a 5-year-old child’s birthday, or about extras you need for a dinner party. Whatever advice you need, Rufus will try to give you some tips.
This is where Rufus becomes more like other generative AI chatbots out there: if you’re stuck for shopping inspiration, or you’re unsure how two types of TV technology compare, then you can get answers. The questions you ask don’t have to be specifically about what’s being sold on Amazon, although chances are you’ll still see links to related items on the site.
Finally, you can also chat with Rufus about the status of your current orders, or the last time you ordered (for example) packaging tape. Sometimes you’ll get an immediate response, and sometimes you’ll get a link to a relevant page on the Amazon site that you can follow. And if you’re wondering how Amazon came up with the name, it has something to do with it one of Amazon’s first employees.