News
Amazon launches shopping by text with Alexa, weeks after blocking Meta's Muse agent
Amazon is rolling out a text-based Alexa for Shopping in the US: select customers get a text inviting them to search for and buy products by message. The move follows Amazon's September block of Meta's Muse agent.
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Amazon has announced that customers in the United States will be able to shop by sending text messages to its Alexa AI agent. The feature is going first to select users just before the start of the holiday shopping season, with a broader rollout planned in the coming weeks.
How text-based Alexa works
Select US customers receive a text message offering to enable the feature. Once activated, they can write in natural language to search for products, add them to their cart and buy them.
According to TechCrunch, the new feature builds on Alexa's recent shopping upgrades. The agent can manage lists, keep tabs on prices, search beyond Amazon, compare products and check order status.
Users can also send a picture of an item or of someone wearing an outfit to find similar listings in Amazon's store. The company says Alexa will learn users' preferences over time and make suggestions based on them.
Background: the Muse block
In September, Amazon blocked Meta's Muse agent, which had been querying its site. TechCrunch presents the new feature as a move that follows that decision and compares it to agents such as Muse and Instinct.
The article notes that as the market for AI agents grows, platforms like Amazon are building their own to tap this new channel for reaching users. DoorDash said that third-party AI agents have placed only hundreds of orders in total with it, and that the company is focusing on its own text-based agent, launched in September.
What remains unknown
The source gives no pricing, list of supported devices or privacy details. It also includes no statements from Amazon representatives, so the company's business goals remain a matter of interpretation.
What it means for readers
For now the feature is available only in the US, and no launch in Poland has been announced. For online retailers, it signals that large platforms want to control the shopping channel involving AI agents and sell through their own solutions.
