Amazon’s AI Shopping Assistant Launch & How Content Will Change
This week, Amazon have announced an upcoming tool set to reshape the shopping experience - a chat assistant powered by AI, called Rufus.
Rufus is designed to help shoppers search and make more informed purchases - working much like a search engine to answer questions. For example, ‘Which makeup is vegan’ or ‘What to consider when buying running shoes?’
Currently, all content on Amazon is in thrall to the elusive and demanding A9 algorithm. We build our content strategies around extensive keyword research and customer insights to create the most streamlined copy possible. It’s all killer, no filler.
But soon, struggling with gift ideas will become a thing of the past when Rufus’ generative AI can answer ‘What to get a 5 year old that loves dinosaurs’ or ‘Gifts for a mother-in-law who loves gardening’. Suddenly, personalised recommendations, prescreened for relevance and positive reviews, will be at every shopper’s fingertips. Shoppers will be able to conduct generalised searches, compare products, and shop by occasion or purpose - with data pulled from reviews, Q&As and the wider internet.
For consumers, Rufus erases the need to leave Amazon to research products before buying. This marks another turn by Amazon to supersede Google as the world’s biggest search engine - a gap which is increasingly closing.
But what does this mean for businesses on Amazon? How will this guide our content creation in the future?
In short: it could change everything.
With Rufus’ generative AI mining deep into the listings, sellers will need to lean into more emotive, detailed language to craft a ‘story’ around each product while economic keyword-led listings take a backseat. The often overlooked Product Description may become the new star of every listing - with its generous 2000 character capacity, this will be where the ‘story’ of the product comes to life.
Rufus is currently being trialled by a small number of US beta-users, but it won’t be long before it’s in the palms of UK and European shoppers. How extensively it affects shopping habits is yet to be known but it’s clear Amazon’s path to AI expansion is only just beginning!
