Amazon’s AI shopper makes sure you don’t leave without spending
Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?
Amazon
The future of online shopping on Amazon is going to be heavily dependent on AI. Early in 2025, the company pushed its Rufus AI agent to spill product information and help users find the right items. A few weeks later, another AI tool called Interests made its way to the shopping site.
The new Alexa+ AI assistant is also capable of placing orders semi-autonomously, handling everything from groceries to booking appointments. Now, the company has started to test yet another AI agent that will buy products from other websites if they’re not available on Amazon — without ever leaving the app.
Hello, Buy for Me!
The feature in question is called “Buy for Me” and it is now available for a small batch of users in the US across the Android and iPhone apps. “We want to make it even easier for customers to find any product they want and need,” says the company.
Amazon notes that the whole system has been integrated seamlessly within the core shopping experience. To that end, users will see product listings from other websites, as well, under the new “Shop brand sites directly” banner.
All you need to do is tap on the product and tap on the “Buy for Me” option. Once the purchase intent is clear, Amazon will link up with the target website and take customers directly to the checkout page where they can pay and confirm the order.
“Using agentic AI capabilities, Amazon makes the purchase by securely providing the customer’s encrypted name, address, and payment details to complete the checkout process on the brand’s website,” explains the company.
The third-party brand will offer an order confirmation on the registered email address, while a new “Buy for Me Orders tab” in the Amazon app will let users keep an eye on the logistics status. There is no extra cost associated with Buy for Me, and it doesn’t require a Prime subscription either.
Some finer details
There is a slight cost caveat, though, regarding the Buy For Me feature. “When you direct Amazon to make the purchase on your behalf, Amazon provides an estimated total, and you’ll agree to pay an amount up to $10 more than the estimated total. You will only be charged by the brand, which calculates the final total,” says Amazon on a support page.
Notably, promo codes are not applicable for products purchased from other sites. Moreover, you can only purchase one item at a time using the experimental feature. Amazon also warns that its return and refund policies won’t apply to these orders.
This new agentic AI shopping feature is built atop Amazon Nova and Anthropic’s Claude AI models. Amazon is already testing a tool called Nova Act that will take over web browsing duties and perform tasks on behalf of users, such as ordering food delivery.
Nadeem is a tech and science journalist who started reading about cool smartphone tech out of curiosity and soon started…
Amazon plans to spend an estimated $100 billion on AI in 2025
AWS sign in Javitz Center NYC. Fionna Agomuoh / Digital Trends
Amazon spent $26.3 billion in capital expenditures during the fourth quarter of 2024, and that is “reasonably representative” of what it plans to spend each quarter of 2025, CEO Andy Jassy said during the company’s Q4 earnings call on Thursday. The “vast majority” of that spending will reportedly go towards Amazon Web Services and AI development.
Everything you need to know about OpenAI’s browser-based agent, Operator
ChatGPT creator OpenAI has finally entered the agentic AI race with the release of its Operator AI in January. The agentic system is designed to work autonomously on its user’s behalf and is primed to compete against already established industry rivals like Claude’s Computer Use API and Microsoft’s Copilot agents — at least, once it sheds its “research preview” status.
Here’s everything you need to know about OpenAI’s new agent and when you might be able to try it for yourself.
What is Operator?
OpenAI’s Operator is an agent AI, meaning that it is designed to take autonomous action based on the information available to it. But unlike conventional programs, AI agents are able to review changing conditions in real-time and react accordingly, rather than simply execute predetermined commands. As such, AI agents are able to perform a variety of complex, multi-step tasks ranging from transcribing, summarizing and generating action items from a business meeting to booking the flight, hotel accommodations, and rental car for an upcoming vacation based on your family’s various schedules to autonomously researching topics and assembling multi-page studies on those subjects.
Stargate Project: everything you need to know about OpenAI’s $500 billion gamble
Shortly after taking office, Donald Trump touted a new private business venture, led by OpenAI, which plans to spend half a trillion dollars over the next four years building the data centers and power production plants that America’s growing AI industry relies on.
“It’s big money and high-quality people,” Trump said during a January 21st press announcement alongside Sam Altman from OpenAI, Larry Ellison from Oracle, and Masayoshi Son from SoftBank. The project is “a resounding declaration of confidence in America’s potential” under his administration, Trump continued, despite the federal government not actually having anything to do with the project.
