Amazon announced on Thursday through its blog that it has begun testing an innovative AI-based shopping feature named Buy for Me with a select group of users.
The Buy for Me functionality activates when a user searches for an item that Amazon itself does not carry. In this scenario, the feature suggests products available from other online stores, enabling shoppers to select and request these items directly within the Amazon Shopping application, eliminating the need to leave Amazon’s platform.
With this move, Amazon joins the ranks of several other tech giants, including OpenAI, Google, and Perplexity, all of whom have presented similar AI shopping assistants capable of navigating external websites to help customers execute purchases. Although Amazon already enjoys dominance as a primary online shopping destination for many people, this new capability has the potential to further expand its reach in the broader e-commerce market.
According to Amazon, the process behind Buy for Me involves the AI shopping agent autonomously accessing a third-party website, selecting the product specified by the user, and automatically entering the customer’s shipping address, payment information, and other necessary details to complete the transaction.
The company reports that its new agent-driven shopping tool operates using the Amazon Nova AI model line, along with Anthropic’s Claude technology. A likely contender among these models is Nova Act, an AI-backed assistant that Amazon recently introduced, designed specifically to autonomously navigate and interact with external websites.
In its blog, Amazon emphasized that the Buy for Me feature employs encryption technology to securely insert customer billing data into third-party sales pages. This security measure ensures that Amazon itself does not gain visibility into purchases made on external retail platforms, distinguishing its approach from competitors like OpenAI or Google, where consumers manually supply their card information, as well as from Perplexity’s agent that relies on a prepaid debit card approach.
Despite these security assurances, the notion of entrusting sensitive credit card details to artificial intelligence may cause hesitation among potential users, especially given the occasional inaccuracies and unreliability associated with AI-based tools. As noted by TechCrunch, purchasing assistants driven by AI often encounter delays and occasional disruptions during transaction processing.
Essentially, Amazon is requesting user trust regarding the accuracy and efficacy of its AI assistant, hoping, for example, that users won’t encounter unexpected purchases like inadvertently receiving a thousand pairs of socks instead of the intended ten. Moreover, customers willingly surrender some degree of control over their online buying activities. Should an issue arise that necessitates a return or an exchange, the Buy for Me feature will redirect users back to the original vendor’s digital store where the initial transaction occurred.
The coming months will reveal whether shoppers are prepared to embrace this new, less controlled method of making online purchases.