Amazon has given a select group of US customers early access to shopping over text messages through its Alexa for Shopping agent. The feature rolled out on Friday and lets users search for items, compare options, and place orders entirely inside a text thread, arriving just ahead of the holiday shopping rush as Amazon pushes deeper into AI-driven shopping.

How the text agent works

Customers with access receive a text message from a contact called “Alexa Shopping” and can then text it like a regular conversation, according to Amazon's official announcement. Because the exchange takes place inside an ordinary message thread, shoppers can move from idea to order without opening an app or learning a new interface. Amazon offered several examples: starting a weekly grocery order, reordering a detergent bought a month earlier, or sending a photo of an outfit to find similar clothing on the site.

The agent can add items to a cart and help complete purchases. It can also watch for price drops and supports pricing-history checks going back up to a year, which lets shoppers judge whether a current discount is a genuine reduction. Beyond ordering, the shopping agent manages shopping lists, tracks packages, and can even find items sold outside of Amazon through a feature called Shop Direct.

Amazon said the agent learns preferences over time. A shopper who asks to see only organic or vegan options, for instance, will find the assistant remembers that request later, cutting down the steps involved in repeat orders.

Rajiv Mehta, Amazon's vice president of Conversational Shopping, said customers can now text Alexa with what they want to buy and let the assistant find it for them.

Invite-only now, millions later

The text feature is currently open only to a small group of invited US customers, with millions more expected to gain access over the next few weeks. Customers who have not been invited can join a waitlist on the sign-up page. The holiday season is typically the busiest stretch of the retail calendar, and the pace of the rollout over the coming weeks will determine how many shoppers have access to the channel by then.

A shopping request started in a text message can be picked up seamlessly on the Amazon app, website, or an Alexa device, and the reverse works as well, keeping a single shopping session moving across whichever device a customer happens to be using. Yahoo Finance reported that Amazon has not said how much money it expects the feature to make.

Shutting out rivals, building its own

The launch comes as Amazon moves to keep other shopping agents from using its platform. In September, it blocked Meta's Muse shopping tool, claiming the tool had accessed Amazon without permission and stored customer login details, according to TechCrunch.

Amazon also took legal action against Perplexity's Comet shopping agent and won a court order to block it in March. A US appeals court overturned the ban in August, however, and the case is still ongoing. That dispute is one to watch, since its outcome will help define whether outside shopping agents can operate against Amazon's storefront while Amazon steers customers toward its own assistant.

Other companies are racing for the same market. DoorDash recently shared that outside AI agents have placed only a few hundred orders on its app, so it is focusing on its own text assistant instead. Meta's Muse and Google's Universal Cart are among the other tools jumping in to let AI shop for and buy items on customers' behalf. In each case, the company is backing a first-party assistant rather than relying on tools built by rivals.

By keeping customers on its own assistant, Amazon can maintain control over how they discover and buy products, rather than letting other AI tools take over that process. With invitations set to reach millions more customers in the coming weeks, the holiday period will give the text-based agent its first large-scale audience.

Source: Cryptopolitan