Washington Post columnist Shira Ovide has a piece in which she tested Rufus, Amazon’s new artificial intelligence chatbot that the company says is designed to help people figure out what to buy based on vocal prompts.
She writes, “In general, I thought the shopping bot was at best a slight upgrade on searching Amazon, Google or news articles for product recommendations … A test version of Amazon’s shopping bot is available only for a select few. That’s good because it needs a lot of work. I am prepared to change my mind if the chatbot significantly improves … The experience encapsulated my exasperation with new types of AI sprouting in seemingly every technology you use. If these chatbots are supposed to be magical, why are so many of them dumb as rocks?”
Ovide writes that “in one of my tests, I asked what I needed to start composting at home. Depending on how I phrased the question, the Amazon bot several times offered basic suggestions that I could find in a how-to article and didn’t recommend specific products.
“Another time, the Amazon bot suggested items such as a small compost bin, compost bin liners, a garden fork and a compost thermometer.
“Compost fans may notice that the first two suggestions were appropriate for collecting compost scraps in your kitchen. The latter two were for making a backyard compost pile. Amazon’s bot appeared to conflate two different needs.
When I clicked the suggestions the bot offered for a kitchen compost bin, I was dumped into a zillion options for countertop compost products. Not helpful.
Because the Amazon chatbot typically shows you a handful of choices, it might feel better than not knowing what product you want and being deluged with a flood of options on Amazon.
“Still, when the Amazon bot responded to my questions, I usually couldn’t tell why the suggested products were considered the right ones for me. Or, I didn’t feel I could trust the chatbot’s recommendations.”
Ovide reports on imprecise, sometimes inappropriate answers from Rufus to other questions, and finishes up this way:
“These AI technologies have potentially profound applications and are rapidly improving. Some people are making productive use of AI chatbots today … But many of these chatbots require you to know exactly how to speak to them, are useless for factual information, constantly make up stuff and in many cases aren’t much of an improvement on existing technologies like an app, news articles, Google or Wikipedia … A mediocre Amazon shopping chatbot is not going to spark nuclear war. It’s fine if Amazon keeps tinkering on its highly flawed experiment.
“But when so many AI chatbots overpromise and underdeliver, it’s a tax on your time, your attention and potentially your money.”
KC’s View:
I think it is fair to acknowledge that we’re in early days when it comes to these kinds of technologies. Not ready for prime time at the moment, with tons of potential.
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