Amazon’s new AI agent will shop third-party sites for you

Amazon is starting to test a new AI shopping agent, a feature it calls “Buy for Me,” with a subset users, the company announced in a blog post Thursday. If Amazon doesn’t sell something that users are searching for, the Buy for Me feature will display products to users that other websites are selling. Then, users can select and request to purchase one of these products without ever leaving the Amazon Shopping app. Amazon is the latest company to unveil an AI shopping agent, joining firms such as OpenAI, Google, and Perplexity, which have all showcased similar agents that can visit websites and help users make purchases. Amazon is already most people’s go-to platform for anything they’d want to purchase on the internet, but Buy for Me could allow Amazon to capture even more e-commerce business than it does today. Behind the scenes, Amazon’s AI shopping agent will visit an external website, select a product that a user requested, and fill out the user’s name, shipping address, and pay ... Read full article.