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As Black Friday Week Begins, Amazon’s AI Shopping Tool Can Buy for You When Prices Drop

Get ready to find all the best Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals.

Black Friday isn’t just a single shopping day anymore. Amazon calls it Black Friday Week, but it actually runs for almost two weeks: from Thursday, Nov. 20, through Monday, Dec. 1. And this year, Amazon is continuing to incorporate Rufus, its built-in AI shopping assistant. The company says Rufus can track prices, personalize recommendations and automatically buy items when they reach your set target price.


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Read also: Winning Black Friday 2025: How to Score Sales Early

Rufus is Amazon’s AI assistant

Rufus, Amazon’s AI shopping assistant, can play a significant role in your shopping experience. You can ask Rufus what’s trending, what fits your set budget or what matches your buying interests. It can surface personalized picks based on your shopping habits, wish lists and browsing patterns.

Rufus can also help you track prices. If there’s an item you’re waiting to buy at a specific discount, Rufus can monitor its price — checking frequently throughout the day — and automatically purchase it once it hits the threshold you’ve set. That means you won’t have to worry about missing lightning deals or losing items in your cart.

Shoppers can also use Rufus for product discovery. The AI assistant can provide tailored gift suggestions or compare products side by side. Because it’s embedded in the Amazon shopping experience, you can ask follow-up questions, refine your preferences or switch categories without having to start over.

Read more: CNET Readers Love Tech Products. Here Are Their Top 100 for 2025

How to save more while you shop this Black Friday

You don’t need a spreadsheet and a stopwatch to survive Black Friday, but a little strategy goes a long way. Here’s how to stay smart:

  • Plan ahead: Start by making a short list of items you genuinely want or need. It’s the easiest way to avoid getting pulled into flashy «half-off» deals that aren’t actually planned purchases. 
  • Create a wish list: Add items early and monitor their pricing throughout the week, as Amazon refreshes deals and inventory daily.

  • Check membership perks: Prime members receive an extra layer of savings with faster shipping options.
  • Timing matters: If you’re shopping across categories, keep an eye on rotating daily deals, since some of the steepest discounts only last a few hours. 
  • Set a budget before shopping: Above all, set a firm budget and stick to it. The best Black Friday win is scoring deals without overspending.

Best Black Friday deals this season

Here’s a quick look at some of the discounts Amazon announced:

  • Amazon devices: Up to 50% off Echo devices, Fire TV devices, Blink security systems and more.
  • Home and holiday decor: Discounts on artificial Christmas trees, ornaments and seasonal decor.
  • Grocery deals: Holiday dinner specials, including turkeys and bundled meal savings.
  • Electronics: Markdowns on products from Bose, JBL, Canon, Acer, Asus and TVs from LG, Hisense and TCL.
  • Home and kitchen appliances: Up to 55% off Shark appliances, plus discounts on Ninja, Vitamix, Nespresso and Staub.
  • Fashion and beauty items: Up to 50% off brands like Levi’s, GAP, NAADAM, Theory, AllSaints and premium beauty products.
  • Books and travel: Up to 80% off Kindle books, print book discounts, and savings on hotels, cruises and car rentals.
  • Prime Visa and Prime Store card perks: Eligible cardholders can earn extra cash-back rewards during the sale. 

Technologies

Fitbit Launches Luffu, AI-Powered Health Tracking for the Whole Family

Soon, you may be able to access every family member’s health data in one place.

If you’ve ever wanted a way to keep all of your family’s health records in place, Fitbit may have come up with a solution. Fitbit, well-known for its fitness wearables, announced the launch of its own health care system on Wednesday.  

Luffu, which translates to the Old English word for «love,» uses AI to create what it calls an «intelligent family care system.» The platform allows family members to share all their health information through an app.

It’s unclear when Luffu will be officially available, but you can sign up for the waitlist to get access to the limited public beta. Pricing or other details have not been announced.

Luffu will allow families to keep track of everyone’s doctor’s appointments, test results, vaccine records, medications, symptoms, diet and more. The platform uses AI to learn your family’s health history and patterns, and to alert you to any changes that should be addressed, such as missed medications or abnormal vitals. The AI function organizes the data submitted into the system. The app will also connect to third-party apps and wearables, such as the Fitbit.

Luffu is meant to lighten the mental load of family care by organizing all this health data in one place, its co-founder said.

«I was caring for my parents from across the country, trying to piece together my mom’s health care across various portals and providers, with a language barrier that made it hard to get a complete, timely context from her about doctor visits,» said Luffu co-founder James Park.

Luffu will include alerts and a space to log health and medication information via voice, text, photos, and other health portals and devices. The key medical information can be shared across the platform with spouses, caregivers and parents.

A representative for Fitbit did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Technologies

These New AI Transcription Models Are Built for Speed and Privacy

Mistral AI’s new Voxtral Mini Transcribe 2 and Voxtral Realtime are intended to run on your device, meaning your conversations never find their way to a data center.

Sometimes you want to transcribe something, but don’t want it to be hanging out on the internet for any hacker to see. Maybe it’s a conversation with your doctor or lawyer. Maybe you’re a journalist, and it’s a sensitive interview. Privacy and control are important.

That desire for privacy is one reason the French developer Mistral AI built its latest transcription models to be small enough to run on devices. They can run on your phone, on your laptop or in the cloud.

Voxtral Mini Transcribe 2, one of the new models announced Wednesday, is «super, super small,» Pierre Stock, Mistral’s vice president of science operations, told me. Another new model, Voxtral Realtime, can do the same thing but live, like closed captioning. 

Privacy is not the only reason the company wanted to build small open-source models. By running right on the device you’re using, these models can work faster. No more waiting on files to find their way through the internet to a data center and back. 

«What you want is the transcription to happen super, super close to you,» Stock said. «And the closest we can find to you is any edge device, so a laptop, a phone, a wearable like a smartwatch, for instance.»

The low latency (read: high speed) is especially important for real-time transcription. The Voxtral Realtime model can generate with a latency of less than 200 milliseconds, Stock said. It can transcribe a speaker’s words about as quickly as you can read them. No more waiting two or three seconds for the closed captioning to catch up.

The Voxtral Realtime model is available through Mistral’s API and on Hugging Face, along with a demo where you can try it out.

In some brief testing, I found it generated fairly quickly (although not as fast as you’d expect if it were on device) and managed to capture what I said accurately in English with a little bit of Spanish mixed in. It’s capable of handling 13 languages right now, according to Mistral. 

Voxtral Mini Transcribe 2 is also available through the company’s API, or you can play around with it in Mistral’s AI Studio. I used the model to transcribe my interview with Stock.

I found it to be quick and pretty reliable, although it struggled with proper names like Mistral AI (which it called Mr. Lay Eye) and Voxtral (VoxTroll). Yes, the AI model got its own name wrong. But Stock said users can customize the model to understand certain words, names and jargon better if they’re using it for specific tasks.

The challenge of building small, fast AI models is that they also have to be accurate, Stock said. The company touted the models’ performance on benchmarks showing improved error rates compared to competitors. 

«It’s not enough to say, OK, I’ll make a small model,» Stock said. «What you need is a small model that has the same quality as larger models, right?»

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Technologies

Don’t Miss Out on Xbox Game Pass Ultimate for $25 Per Month

With this StackSocial offer, you’re getting access to hundreds of games for either $25 for one month or $74 for three months.

Right now at StackSocial, you can get a three-month membership for just $74, which brings each month to $25. Normally $30 per month, you can also opt for a single-month plan for $25. I’ve been following Xbox Game Pass pricing for a while, so this is a great deal. Just keep in mind, once you get your download code via email, the purchase cannot be changed or returned. 

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate lets you access games not only on your console but also on a PC or mobile device. Basically, you can play what you want, when you want, where you want. Game Pass adds new games all the time, with not only older titles making their way to the service but also brand-new Xbox games, including releases from Microsoft’s own studios on the day of release.

Hey, did you know? CNET Deals texts are free, easy and save you money.

Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is a brilliant way to save cash while playing fantastic games, including Black Ops 6, Halo: Infinite, Hellblade 2, Starfield and tons more. While the lineup changes each month, more than 500 games are available to play. It’s the closest thing to a Netflix for games.

Please note that Microsoft allows prepayment for up to 36 months of access, so 12 is the maximum number of subscriptions you should purchase. You can check out our full roundup of all the best Xbox deals for more savings on games and accessories.

Why this deal matters 

The last time we saw the Game Pass subscription discounted was around the holiday season. Right now, you can get access to hundreds of games for essentially the price of one. Whether you choose the one- or three-month option, the price is the same at $25 per month. Since most games aren’t usually priced below $25, this is a steal. 

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