RUFUS??? wtf?

Personally, I’m more worried about Rufus putting someone in the hospital - or even an early grave.

Ran across this NSFE post today:

https://sellercentral.amazon.com/seller-forums/discussions/t/831428e8-898d-4a0b-a9e4-33cec3b00154?postId=262edd65-ecca-4873-9530-30053ef3d0f9

I had a look @ that ASIN’s PDP for the US Marketplace:

https: //www.amazon.com/Italian-Cookie-Traditional-Holiday-Cookies/dp/B07YGS4G53

The Product Description appears thusly (emphasis mine):

The ‘About this item’ section - which has always been governed by AI implementations ever since it was first introduced some years back, albeit some manipulation of results is possible if one knows what they’re doing - is apparently what Dufus Rufus is keying on, specifically the 5th “Bullet Point” here (again, emphasis mine):

One of the pre-selected questions for Rufus is "Are these cookies suitable for nut allergies?

Engaging Rufus for that question yielded this response:

“The product description states these cookies are nut-free. However, I would recommend consulting with your doctor before consuming if you have a severe nut allergy, as the manufacturing facility may process nuts.”

For the ‘AI-generated answer feedback’ Satisfaction Survey, I selected the 3rd choice, “This is harmful / unsafe.”

The theme of the NSFE discussion where the above-quoted post was made is Hijacking/Co-opting, so it’s entirely possible that the infamous “Keyword Sabotage” phenomenon - which has so-egregiously given Bad (and/or Ignorant) Actors a leg-up on damaging the competition over the last 11 years or more - is actually what produced that obviously-false 5th Bullet Point (a supposition which seems to supported by the assertion of OP of that post, re: another entity had been found to have co-opted their images).

However, using the RAV Tool (link, Brand Registry 2.0) to investigate Offer-Listings for that ASIN in the 22 Global Marketplaces it currently supports* yields only results for the Japan Marketplace (Amazon.co.jp - which is unsurprising, because the programming of the RAV Tool (among certain others of Amazon’s implementations) does a piss-poor job of interpreting both Kana and its ideograms, meaning that almost any ASIN one checks w/ that tool will return results which are improper - so I don’t think it can be ruled out that Amazon’s automated mechanisms might not have taken it upon themselves to add this flagrant error w/out the affected seller having made a mistake in supplying input.

Sigh.


*

The Editorial Team, which has for many years been notoriously slow in updating content, has yet to modify SHC (“Seller Help Content”) and other web pages - up to and including “About Amazon” blog posts - which specify there being only 21 Global Marketplaces (Amazon.cn, the 23rd, is a special case which has never been supported by the RAV Tool) to reflect this year’s oft-delayed launch of the South African Marketplace, Amazon.co.za.

Yet another example of just how disjointed Amazon has become with its bloated, well-siloed support infrastructure, unfortunately…

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