Amazon lets US customers text Alexa to search, compare and order products

A text-based shopping agent for a small group

Amazon has started letting selected US customers shop by texting Alexa for Shopping, its AI shopping agent. The company said on Friday, 6 November, that the feature will reach millions more customers in the coming weeks. Customers who are not invited can join a waitlist, while invitees receive a message asking them to switch the service on. Once a customer opts in, a new contact appears on the phone, and the customer links a phone number to use it.

What the agent can do

Customers can describe what they want in everyday language, such as a weekly grocery order, a gift idea or a quick re-order of something running low. They can also send a photo of a product or an outfit, and the agent searches Amazon listings for similar items. It replies with options and adds approved items to the cart, completing the purchase with the customer's approval or automatically when a price reaches a level the customer set. The agent can also track price changes, reorder past purchases, check on packages and show a product's pricing history for up to a year. Conversations carry over to the Amazon Shopping app, the website and Alexa devices.

“Now with Alexa for Shopping, your personal shopping agent is just a text away.”

Rajiv Mehta, Amazon's vice president of conversational shopping, framed the launch in these terms when announcing it.

Context and the wider rollout

Alexa for Shopping launched in May, and Amazon says more than 400 million customers used it in the past year. Texting extends the service to a new channel. In September Amazon blocked Meta's Muse agent from shopping its site, and chief executive Andy Jassy has said he expects Alexa for Shopping to become the main agent people use to buy from Amazon. Amazon has also added more than 100 features to the assistant, including shopping lists, gift registries, product subscriptions and help with payment and billing questions. Those tools are available through the Amazon Shopping app without an Amazon device or a Prime membership.

Sponsored products can now appear among the options the agent sends by text. Amazon is not yet charging advertisers for this placement, and purchases the agent completes on its own carry no ads, according to Digiday. The company took in more than $68B from advertising in 2025.

Rivals moving into messaging

OpenAI added texting to Dot, its personal agent, in October. DoorDash began taking orders by text in September and has its own text-based ordering assistant. In October, DoorDash said third-party agents had so far placed only hundreds of orders in total on its platform, and it plans to focus on developing its own agent further.

Holiday spending and AI

Experts project that US holiday retail sales will exceed $1 trillion, with more AI-assisted shopping than in any earlier season. Omnisend found that 38 percent of US shoppers bought something directly through ChatGPT in 2025, and another 63 percent used AI to research purchases, find new products or build gift lists. Adobe projects consumers will spend $275 billion online from November to December, nearly $20 billion more than in 2025. In a July Adobe survey of 5,000 people, 77 percent of consumers said AI made them more confident about what they bought online. Traffic from AI chatbot links to retailers is projected to rise 130 percent in November and December.