Amazon is starting to test a new AI purchase agent, a feature he calls “buy for me”, with a subset, the company announced in a blog THURSDAY.
If Amazon does not sell something that users are looking for, the purchase function for me will display products from users that other websites sell. Then users can select and ask to buy one of these products without ever leaving Amazon’s purchase application.
Amazon is the last company to unveil an AI shopping officer, joining businesses such as Openai, Google and Perplexity, who have all presented similar agents who can visit websites and help users make purchases. Amazon is already the essential platform of most people for everything they would like to buy on the internet, but buy for me could allow Amazon to capture even more electronic trade than today.
Behind the scenes, Amazon’s AI shopping agent will visit an external website, select a product that a user has requested and fulfilled the name, shipping address and user payment details to buy it, according to Amazon.
Amazon claims that the new agent purchase feature is fueled by its Amazon Nova AI models, in addition to Claude d’Anthropic. One of these models could be Nova Act, an Amazon IA agent unveiled earlier this week that can use websites independently.
Amazon has declared in the aforementioned blog post that the purchase for me uses encryption to insert “in complete safety” your invoicing information on third-party sites, so that Amazon cannot see what you order from the outside of its platform. This is a unique approach to OpenAi and Google agents, which require humans to fill credit card information themselves, as well as Perplexity AI agent, who has a prepaid debit card to make purchases.
The delivery of information from your credit card to AI, which is subject to hallucinations and errors, can give some users a big break. In the Techcrunch experience, AI sales agents often take a long time to process requests and are often stuck somewhere along the line.
Amazon essentially asks users to believe that its agent will not accidentally buy 1,000 pairs of socks instead of 10, for example. He also wonders that they accept less control over the purchasing experience. If a customer has to return or exchange an order, buy for me will direct it to the digital window from which the AI agent has purchased.
We will soon see how many people are ready to take the plunge.
