Amazon AI Agent Now Shops Third-Party Sites

Amazon's rolling out a new feature called "Buy for Me," and it's starting with a select group of users, according to their latest blog post. This AI-powered shopping agent is pretty cool because if Amazon doesn't have what you're looking for, it'll show you products from other websites right in the Amazon Shopping app. You can pick what you want and buy it without ever having to leave the app.

Amazon isn't the first to jump on the AI shopping agent bandwagon. Companies like OpenAI, Google, and Perplexity have already introduced their own versions that can browse websites and help you make purchases. Amazon's already the go-to place for online shopping, but with "Buy for Me," they might just grab an even bigger slice of the e-commerce pie.

Here's how it works behind the scenes: Amazon's AI agent will hop onto an external website, pick out the product you want, and fill in your details like name, address, and payment info to complete the purchase, as explained by Amazon.

The "Buy for Me" feature is powered by Amazon's own Nova AI models, plus a bit of help from Anthropic's Claude. They've even got this new Nova Act model that can navigate websites on its own, which they just showed off this week.

Amazon's blog post also mentions that "Buy for Me" uses encryption to safely insert your billing info on third-party sites, so Amazon can't see what you're buying from outside their platform. This is different from how OpenAI and Google handle things, where you've got to enter your credit card info yourself, and Perplexity, which uses a prepaid debit card for purchases.

Now, handing over your credit card details to an AI that can sometimes mess up might make some folks nervous. From what we've seen, AI shopping agents can take forever to process requests and often hit a snag somewhere. Amazon's basically asking you to trust that their AI won't accidentally buy 1,000 pairs of socks when you only wanted 10. Plus, you're giving up some control over your shopping experience. If you need to return or exchange something, "Buy for Me" will send you back to the original website where the AI made the purchase.

It'll be interesting to see how many people are ready to give this a shot.