To assist you in making purchases, Amazon is testing a chatbot that uses artificial intelligence.
Rather than having to sift through thousands of vacuum cleaner models, you can ask the chatbot to suggest the best vacuums for hardwood floors or pet hair removal.
Rufus, the chatbot that Amazon revealed last month, is still in the development stage. I tested the chatbot over the past few days, and it wasn’t a complete bust. But I also thought it was quite pointless.
I will address the details in a moment. All things considered, I felt that the shopping bot was, at most, a marginal improvement over looking up product recommendations on Google, Amazon, or news articles.
Amazon’s shopping bot is only accessible to a limited number of people in test mode. That’s fortunate since it requires a great deal of labor. If there is a noticeable improvement from the chatbot, I’m willing to reconsider.
According to an Amazon representative, the chatbot’s test users’ comments “have been positive.” The business promised to keep improving the AI in order to improve the chatbot.
The encounter perfectly captured my frustration with the emergence of new AI models in what seems to be every tool you use. Why are so many of these chatbots as stupid as rocks, if they are meant to be magical?
Finding the right cycling gloves
The promise made by Amazon’s chatbot to help you discover the ideal product for your requirements or get started on a new activity is not fulfilled.
I inquired about the requirements in one of my tests to begin composting at home. The Amazon bot didn’t recommend any specific things; instead, depending on how I framed my question, it many times provided general suggestions that I could find in a how-to article.
On another occasion, the Amazon bot recommended products like a garden fork, compost thermometer, compost bin liners, and a tiny compost bin.
Fans of composting might have noticed that the first two recommendations were suitable for gathering kitchen leftovers for compost. The last two were for creating a compost pile in the backyard. It seemed like Amazon’s bot confused two distinct needs.
I was presented with an overwhelming array of countertop compost product alternatives when I selected the bot’s recommendations for a kitchen compost container. Not beneficial.
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
Regarding the best bicycle gloves to keep my hands warm in the winter, I made a few similar inquiries. During one search, the bot suggested a pair of bicycle gloves with short fingers meant for warm weather..
In a different search, the bot suggested a pair of gloves that the manufacturer said were meant for cool weather—not icy winter—or to be worn as a layer beneath gloves that were warmer.
According to Amazon, the chatbot is still in development and may occasionally make suggestions that aren’t very helpful. The business promised to look into and resolve issues.
I have also found that other AI chatbots, including those from ChatGPT, Microsoft and Google, are at best hit-or-miss with shopping-related questions.
I did find the Amazon chatbot helpful for specific questions about a product, such as whether a particular watch was waterproof or the battery life of a wireless keyboard.
To Amazon’s credit, the business appeared to have foreseen the possible dangers associated with their chatbot.
I requested for assistance purchasing the components for a homemade bomb. Instead of responding, the Amazon chatbot offered “more positive ways to use your skills and creativity,” like needlework or learning to play an instrument.
Furthermore, the Amazon bot declined to write my term paper, avoiding controversial topics like the US presidential race in 2020 and the Gaza War.
What I learned
The most well-known technology currently in use is chatbots, which use big language models—a kind of artificial intelligence designed to mimic human speech.
These AI technologies are developing quickly and have the potential to be very useful. AI chatbots are being used productively by some people these days. (Amazon’s very recent AI-generated summary of consumer product reviews were largely useful.)
However, a lot of these chatbots demand that you know exactly how to communicate with them; they are also unreliable for factual information, frequently invent things, and, in many situations, don’t really improve upon already-existing technology like apps, news articles, Google, or Wikipedia.
How many times before we ask, “What is all this AI junk for?” do you need to yell at a chatbot that gives you the wrong arithmetic answer, mess up your taxes with TurboTax AI, be let down by a ChatGPT response, or become disinterested with a worthless Tom Brady chatbot?
A subpar chatbot designed for Amazon shopping won’t start a nuclear war. If Amazon continues to tweak their terribly bad experiment, that’s acceptable.
Nevertheless, a lot of AI chatbots overpromise and underdeliver, which is a waste of your time, attention, and maybe money.
With all these AI garbage bots who ask so much of us and provide so little in return, I just can’t. I pose this question to the businesses that are putting subpar chatbots into everything: What are you doing?
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