US e-commerce giant Amazon has announced the launch in Europe of Rufus, a smart shopping assistant already deployed in the USA, that can answer practical questions and help requests by Amazon customers.

Rufus is described as an AI-powered smart shopping assistant, trained using the Amazon product catalogue. It also draws on information available online. Rufus’s main objective is to help customers find the products that best suit them, according to their habits, tastes, and especially needs of the moment. Unlike a search engine, it doesn’t answer keyword prompts only, but it directly replies to questions asked orally by customers.

For Amazon, this new tool is an opportunity to facilitate the discovery of new products, which are sometimes lost within its gigantic product assortment. This is not the first time that Amazon has adopted AI tools to simplify shopping, especially at the search stage. But Rufus is a major step forward for the group in this respect. It is able to compare products, issue bespoke recommendations, give detailed product explanations and more, like a personal sales advisor, and is capable of improving its performance over time.

To refine the system, customers are invited to give their feedback by giving a thumbs-up or down comment to Rufus’s answers. Since its preview launch in the USA, Rufus is said to have already answered tens of millions of customer queries. 

Amazon customers can ask Rufus questions like: “Are these shoes sustainable?”, “What different types of headphones are there on the market?”, “Is this tennis racket suitable for beginners?”, “What is the difference between lip gloss and lip oil?”, and “What are the best games for a 5-year-old child on a rainy day?”.

Rufus’s beta version has been launched in Europe on Amazon’s mobile app for a few expert customers, and will be gradually extended to all customers in the coming weeks. The Rufus dialogue box is accessible via its own icon on the app.

Amazon has recently reported Q3 results exceeding market expectations, as well as the group’s own forecasts. In Q3, its e-commerce business grew by 9% to $95.5 billion.

Its e-commerce revenue grew by 12% in 2023, reaching $574.8 billion, thanks to a 12% increase in North America and an 11% one elsewhere in the world.

Last year, Amazon was the biggest online fashion retailer in the USA, ahead of Walmart, Shein and Macy’s. It was also the largest cross-border fashion e-tailer in Europe, ahead of Alibaba-owned Aliexpress, Temu, and EBay.