Amazon discontinued its Rufus chatbot and launched Alexa for Shopping, a new AI shopping agent that merges Rufus and Alexa+ and taps users’ shopping history to answer questions, compare products side by side, and schedule purchases when an item hits a target price. The tool will be inserted directly into Amazon’s search results, with a chat window appearing when users browse for products, and can be summoned via a cursive A icon on Amazon’s website and app or through Echo Show displays, with no Prime membership required. Amazon’s top Alexa executive Daniel Rausch said the offering is better than rival AI shopping tools from OpenAI, Google, and Perplexity because it has direct access to customer reviews, the product catalog, stock availability, and delivery estimates rather than scraping web results. The move could disrupt Amazon’s millions of third-party sellers who pay top dollar for sponsored product listings that account for most of Amazon’s advertising revenue, though Rausch said the tool will feature ads where relevant and is designed to expose more products rather than narrow search.
