Amazon has shut down its TikTok - esque societal shopping feed , Inspire , and will be replacing it with Rufus . By “ Rufus , ” we mean the AI shopping chatbot , not the au naturel mole rat fromKim Possible .
According to a report fromThe info , Amazon user received a message from the online retail troupe saying that the Inspire provender was no longer usable . The lightbulb ikon that was used to access Inspire from the bottom of the Amazon app ’s home screen also go away . Kevin King , the founder of the Billion Dollar Sellers newssheet , posted a screenshot of the content onLinkedIn , which read , “ give thanks you for using Amazon Inspire to discover and shop young products on Amazon . Please note that Inspire is no longer available in the Amazon shopping app . ”
The Inspire feed , which Amazon launched in 2023 , put up an endless scroll of shoppable videos and simulacrum of production deal on the site post by content Maker and customers to demonstrate the use of tell products and give testimonials on them . It was especially useful for content God Almighty and influencers , as they would earn commissions from people grease one’s palms the products now after viewing their capacity as part of the Amazon Influencer Program .
“ We regularly appraise various feature to better adjust with what customer tell us matter most , and as part of that , Inspire is no longer useable , ” an Amazon representative said .
While they did n’t further explicate the ground why Inspire was shut down , it can be implied that it did n’t exploit as well as TikTok ’s Discover page in converting sales and compelling influencers to post contentedness on there more frequently , as they can earn income elsewhere . However , they did airt customer to other means of receiving production recommendation , including Rufus .
Rufus is an AI shopping assistant that answers question to customers in an effort to aid them obtain the products that good suit their needs fast . For model , you could ask “ Best giving for gamers , ” and it ’ll recommend gaming headset , mouse , chairwoman , and consoles . Rufus will then ask , “ Can you share a fleck about their favorite games or genre ? For representative , ‘ They enjoy RPGs likeSkyrim . ' ” You react , “ They play JRPGs likeKingdom HeartsandFire Emblem , ” and it ’ll advocate ware based on the game mentioned or like , such as a Funko Pop figure of a lineament fromNi no Kuni .
Amazon shutting down Inspire concur with the effectual dramatic event besiege TikTok , which recentlyreturned to the App Store and Google wager in the U.S.following a letter Attorney General Pam Bondi direct to Apple and Google assuring them they wo n’t present any penalization related to the TikTok ban . The app was removed from both shopfront on January 18 as a issue of a law that banned TikTok unless ByteDance sell it to an American company . Two days later , President Trump signed an executive order granting a 75 - 24-hour interval stay on the ban while his governing body count on out the best way forward .
How long the TikTok app will stay on the app entrepot is unidentified . With Inspire gone from Amazon , it may be a small hard for influencers to take in money from the content they stake on the land site . Although , it ’s worth point out thatAmazon Live , the live - streaming and live - shopping characteristic , is still active , so maybe not that hard .
