Amazon Rolls Out AI Shopping Assistant In India, Nearly A Year Behind Walmart-Backed Flipkart

This story was originally published on the Benzinga India portal.

Amazon.com Inc. AMZN has announced the launch of its artificial intelligence-powered shopping assistant, Rufus, in India. This comes after the successful introduction of Rufus in the United States six months prior.

What Happened: Amazon extended its AI shopping assistant Rufus to India on August 27. This move is a part of Amazon's strategy to incorporate generative AI features into its services in a competitive AI landscape that includes tech giants like Microsoft, Google and Meta.

Starting Tuesday, select customers on the Amazon mobile app will have access to the AI assistant, with a wider rollout planned in the upcoming weeks. Rufus, which was first introduced in February, is designed to assist customers with product discovery, answering shopping queries, comparing products and providing recommendations.

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Rufus will be located on the bottom right of the app's main navigation bar, opening a chat dialogue box on the user's screen. Users can expand the chat dialogue box to view answers to their questions, tap on suggested questions and ask follow-up questions.

Competitor Flipkart launched a similar shopping assistant, Flippi, in October 2023. Over the past year, Amazon has introduced several generative AI-powered features in the Amazon marketplace, including AI-generated review highlights and enhanced product listings.

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Disclaimer: Artificial intelligence was used as a secondary aid in the writing of this story.