Amazon Integrates Alexa Into Shopping Search, Discontinues Separate Rufus Chatbot

Amazon on Wednesday launched Alexa for Shopping, an e-commerce assistant that the company is positioning as the centerpiece of its artificial intelligence shopping strategy while discontinuing its stand-alone Rufus chatbot. The company is adding Alexa to search results on its store so that a chat window appears with information and recommended items when users browse for products.

Alexa for Shopping turns Amazon's search bar into a Q&A engine and lets users compare products side by side as well as schedule purchases when an item hits a certain price.

Users can summon Alexa for Shopping by clicking a cursive A icon on Amazon's website or app or via Echo Show displays. A Prime membership is not required to use Alexa for Shopping. Amazon will use Rufus recommendation features and shopping history for certain Alexa for Shopping queries.

The company unveiled Rufus a little over two years ago and described it as an expert shopping assistant, though it remained in beta. Daniel Rausch, Amazon's top Alexa executive, said the new offering is superior to other AI shopping tools because it has access to customer reviews, a vast product catalog, and can reliably tell whether a product is in stock or estimated delivery times.

"As I'm using it, I'm just realizing why other AI efforts have struggled with shopping because it's not just scraping web results and then putting things in a conversation," Rausch said in an interview.

Rausch said he wasn't surprised others have had to undo a bunch of features that were incomplete or disjointed. "It's just not worth it," he said. OpenAI ended Instant Checkout earlier this year.

Amazon has launched Buy for Me, which uses AI to purchase products on a customer's behalf including products sold on other retailers' websites. CEO Andy Jassy has said the company is having conversations with and expects to partner with third-party agents. Alexa for Shopping will feature ads where they're relevant and when they enhance the shopping experience.

Cnbc reported that by inserting Alexa for Shopping into search results, Amazon is taking advantage of valuable real estate for promotion. The ads, which Amazon refers to as sponsored product listings, account for most of the company's advertising revenue. Rausch added that Alexa for Shopping is not designed to narrow search results.

"It's there to, in some cases, expose even more products for customers, depending on where you are in the journey," he said.