Amazon Weighs ‘Hybrid Mode’ AI Searches on Retail Site

Amazon has so far kept its Rufus AI shopping assistant largely separate from its main commerce search bar. But the retail giant is leaving the door open to adding AI commentary to search results, bringing browsing and researching more seamlessly into the buying process.

That includes hybrid modes, such as Amazon showing a conversational blurb above search results for certain queries without moving shoppers into a separate chatbot, according to Amanda Doerr, Amazon’s vice president of core shopping. The company has been in various stages of testing how to best integrate more AI responses in search.