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Amazon Consolidates Shopping Strategy, Retires Rufus Chatbot for Alexa Integration

Amazon is discontinuing its standalone Rufus chatbot and repositioning Alexa as the primary engine for its e-commerce shopping assistance. The company launched Alexa for Shopping, which merges capabilities from both Rufus and Alexa+, leveraging customer purchase history and behavioral data to deliver personalized product recommendations and answer shopping queries. The new tool integrates directly into Amazon's search results, displaying a chat window with relevant items when customers browse products. Users can access Alexa for Shopping via a cursive A icon on Amazon's website and mobile app, or through Echo Show displays. While Rufus will be phased out, Amazon will retain its recommendation engine and shopping history tracking within Alexa for Shopping's infrastructure. Rufus was introduced over two years ago as a beta feature on Amazon's website and app.