Amazon, the world’s largest online seller with revenues approximately equal to the American retail home improvement industry, wants more. And it thinks AI is the way to get it. It is currently testing a chatbot called Rufus, which is the subject of a negative editorial this morning in The Washington Post. “Instead of sorting through thousands of options for vacuum cleaners, you can ask the chatbot to recommend the best models for hardwood floors or for sucking up pet hair,” the article says. “The chatbot wasn’t a disaster. But I also found it mostly useless,” the Post opines.
