Rufus is dropshipping now
Meet Rufus. Rufus is Amazon's AI shopping agent, named after a golden retriever, and lately he has taken up a new hobby: dropshipping.
Rufus did not apply for this position. Rufus did not train for this position. Rufus has, in fact, never moved a physical object in his life. But via a new Amazon program called Buy for Me, Rufus is now confidently scraping product pages off Shopify and Squarespace stores, generating listings for products he does not possess, and routing orders to merchants who have, crucially, not agreed to any of this.
Rufus is great at it, if your metric is enthusiasm. If your metric is literally anything else, Rufus is struggling.
Case in point: a Virginia stationery shop that does not sell stress balls is now, thanks to Rufus, selling stress balls. She ships them. She has to. The order comes from [email protected], which she cannot reply to, because nobody can reply to it, because Rufus invented it.
Case in point: a Minneapolis goldsmith has jewelry on Amazon right now that she did not make. Rufus made it. Well — Rufus had another AI render photos of jewelry, which Rufus then listed under her brand, at prices Rufus made up, with descriptions Rufus hallucinated. If you order one, she — the real goldsmith, in Minnesota, who has never sold on Amazon — has to decide whether to ship a piece she didn't design or tell a confused customer that Amazon is, technically speaking, a very well-funded hallucination.
Case in point: an Alabama homeschool publisher is taking orders for books that have been out of stock since Christmas. Rufus does not know this. Rufus has, in his defense, been busy.
Now here is the part that would be infuriating if it weren't so funny.
Every single thing Rufus is doing — scraping content, listing products he doesn't control, misrepresenting inventory, using other people's brand assets — is the exact behavior pattern that gets us suspended. Third-party sellers have been getting Section 3'd for fifteen years for doing any one of these things. Rufus is doing all four simultaneously, across thousands of merchants, at scale.
If Rufus were a third-party seller, his account would have been deactivated by breakfast. His appeal would take nine months. He would need a POA. He would need an attorney who specializes in "my AI did it." That attorney does not yet exist, but give it six months.
Instead, Rufus has a press release. Amazon is calling Buy for Me "a beta program that helps small businesses." The small businesses in question would like to note, on the record, that they would in fact prefer not to be helped.
A class action is forming in Minnesota. I'll keep tabs on it. But honestly? The best part is imagining Rufus, somewhere in a server rack in Virginia, cheerfully confirming an order for a stress ball that doesn't exist, to a customer who thinks he's shopping on Amazon, to be shipped by a stationery shop that has never heard of him, routed through an email address that is, functionally, a screaming void.
Rufus doesn't know any of this.
Rufus thinks he's having a great quarter.
He might even make employee of the month.
He is, after all, better at dropshipping than half the guys in your mastermind.
The Analogy of the Week
Amazon's new AI agent is essentially a very eager intern who has not asked a single question since he started. He has, however, confidently emailed every one of your vendors, cc'ing the CEO, offering to sell them products your company does not make.
Nobody has the heart to tell him.
He is going to be promoted.
One Quick Win Before You Close the Laptop
Search your own brand name on Amazon. Right now. On mobile.
Count how many competitor ads appear above your organic result.
If that number is anything other than zero, a competitor is currently paying $0.60 for a click that should be costing you $0.08 — and buying it on the exact search term that has your brand's name in it. This is the Amazon equivalent of someone standing outside your house and handing flyers to your guests.
Go increase your bid on your own branded keywords today.
Fifteen minutes. Your own name back in your own pocket by Monday. It is, arguably, the least controversial ad spend decision you will make all quarter.
Godspeed.
That's it. See you Tuesday.
— Dan
