A small group of US Amazon customers can now shop by text message. They send a request to “Alexa Shopping” and the AI agent searches for products, compares options, builds a cart and, when they are ready, completes the purchase on their behalf. Amazon began sending invitations on 6 November and says access will expand to “millions more customers in the coming weeks.”
Beyond buying, the texting service can set up weekly grocery orders, add recipe ingredients from a photo, find similar products from a picture, reorder past purchases, track packages and send price alerts with up to a year of price history. Conversations carry over between the Amazon Shopping app, Amazon.com and Alexa devices. Joining means accepting terms and linking a phone number.
Why it matters: this moves agent shopping out of apps and into ordinary text messages, the channel most people already use every day. Amazon says reorders happen “with your approval”, but its announcement does not spell out the confirmation step for each purchase or mention spending limits, the kind of guardrails Walmart set out for shopping agents last month. Anyone invited should check how purchases are confirmed before relying on it.
Source: Amazon