Amazon's Game-Changing AI Updates: Meet RUFUS and COSMO
It’s no secret that AI technology is the future, and Amazon's latest game-changing updates are creating a buzz in the e-commerce world with RUFUS and COSMO.
RUFUS: Your Personal Shopping Assistant
RUFUS is designed to assist users with their shopping needs, essentially acting as a personal shopping assistant. This innovative chatbot can handle a variety of tasks, from answering general product-related questions to making personalised recommendations based on user queries. By gathering customer insights and product information, RUFUS tailors the shopping experience to individual preferences and behaviours, enhancing the overall user experience.
COSMO: Revolutionising Search on Amazon
COSMO is a major development that’s truly capturing our attention. This newly integrated AI tool impacts Amazon’s search algorithm, going beyond matching keywords to understanding the intent behind searches and identifying what users really need.
How does COSMO work? It utilises large language models (LLMs) and extensive behavioural data to create a sophisticated knowledge graph. This graph bridges the gap between basic product attributes and deeper user intents, analysing product functionality, customer needs, and usage patterns. By incorporating common sense reasoning, COSMO improves search results, understanding the context behind customer queries.
Amazon Science explains: "If a customer, for instance, submits a query for ‘shoes for pregnant women,’ the recommendation engine should deduce that pregnant women might want slip-resistant shoes. Amazon is building a knowledge graph that encodes relationships between products in the Amazon Store and the human contexts in which they play a role — their functions, their audiences, the locations in which they’re used, and the like. For instance, the knowledge graph might use the used_for_audience relationship to link slip-resistant shoes and pregnant women."
COSMO continuously learns from past searches and makes predictions, making customer intent and context key ranking factors, potentially more important than exact-match keywords.
For shoppers, this means a smoother, more intuitive search that feels like Amazon truly understands what they’re looking for. For sellers, it’s an opportunity to fine-tune listings to align with what COSMO learns about customers.
Amazon meticulously conducted online A/B tests over several months, targeting approximately 10% of Amazon's U.S. traffic. The tests revealed a notable 0.7% relative increase in product sales within this segment, translating to hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue. Additionally, an 8% increase in navigation engagement rate was observed, highlighting improved customer interaction and satisfaction.
With RUFUS and COSMO, Amazon is not just keeping up with the future of AI technology but actively shaping it, enhancing the shopping experience for users and creating significant opportunities for sellers.
