Concerns arise over Amazon’s AI assistant, Rufus, and its behavior

Now that Rufus, Amazon’s new AI shopping assistant is being rolled out officially, concerns arise over its behavior, a new report by Reuters states.

The goal of Rufus is, besides making a whole lot of money for Amazon, to help and guide users on Amazon with their shopping experience.

The AI bot, per Amazon, has been trained on its product catalog, customer reviews, community Q&As, as well as information from the web. That’s great, but Rufus’ greatest power lies in the fact that Amazon has an edge over AI rivals in the face of Google and Microsoft by having a juicy stockpile of purchasing and personalized data from countless Amazon users.

Rufus, now available in beta (but coming to the masses in the coming weeks) has been built to answer specific questions, provide comparisons, recommend and guide customers to a successful closing of a deal.

Reuters’ report, however, reminds us that “Amazon has a history of steering customers towards products that most benefit Amazon, either because they are more profitable or are backed by advertising dollars”. In other words – can we trust Rufus to make shopping decisions for us and will those decisions be the best for us… or the best for the retailer giant?

Besides sharing information that Rufus was trained on Amazon’s catalog, reviews and community Q&As, the algorithm behind the bot is a secret that Amazon declined to discuss.

Michael Pachter, a Wedbush Securities analyst, said Amazon would be turning money away if it didn’t link Rufus’ results with advertisers and their products: “You’ll most likely get sponsored results. Advertising drives retail and Amazon is no different – why do you think they are generating tens of billions of dollars in advertising a year?”

Per the article, Amazon is combating an antitrust lawsuit by the Federal Trade Commission which alleges the Seattle firm operates a “pay-to-play” system, giving top billing for the products on which marketers were willing to spend the most. The agency states that Amazon often pushes its own brands to the top of search results, even when other goods may be of higher quality or at a better price. The company has denied the claims and said it will contest the suit in court.