Amazon's AI personal shopper is sharing ads with its advice

Amazon proclaimed its shopping AI chatbot Rufus as a solution for people overwhelmed by the dizzying array of products on its website. But, since it’s Amazon, that’s now going to include some ads, as Adweek first noted. Rufus (named for a pet corgi owned by early Amazon employees) uses AI to research products and recommend purchases through conversations.

“To help customers discover more products in Amazon’s generative AI-powered shopping assistant, referred to as Rufus, your ads may appear in Rufus-related placements,” the update to advertisers explains. “Rufus may generate accompanying text based on the context of the conversation.”

Rufus generates results based on Amazon’s vast product catalog, customer reviews, and community Q&As. In some ways, the advertising is just another category of information. The update brings it closer to how the standard Amazon shopping search works. Instead of ‘sponsored’ suggestions for products as links on the page, Rufus will directly highlight advertised products as it answers your questions.

Obviously, Amazon doesn’t want to spam Rufus users with unrelated ads, hence the reference to “context.” So, when you ask Rufus to compare different products or ask for gift ideas, you won’t get nonsensical suggestions. It’s just that anything an advertiser has paid to sponsor will likely join the comparison or be included early in the collection of gift ideas.

Rufus is still technically an experiment, and Amazon has warned that its responses might be inaccurate. What that might mean for sponsored products is unclear, but presumably, Amazon doesn’t want hallucinations to mar the ads it serves for its clients.

AI Ad Men

Rufus isn’t the first to start mixing ads with its AI. Microsoft began testing advertising through its Copilot AI chatbot a year ago. And AI conversational search engine Perplexity has begun including sponsored suggestions for its search results in a way that more closely resembles Google’s business model.

But Amazon is the king of e-commerce, and other platforms will likely be watching closely. If Rufus ends up being a real boon for companies advertising on Amazon, you can bet imitators will rapidly roll out elsewhere if they haven’t already. The ads may just be a revenue driver for Amazon, but Rufus might be fetching the next iteration of online advertising.