Amazon has launched a text-based shopping service through its AI-powered Alexa assistant, allowing customers to discover products, compare prices and make purchases simply by sending a message.

The company is rolling out the feature to a small group of invited US customers, with plans to expand access to millions more shoppers in the coming weeks.

The new service allows users to text Alexa for Shopping with requests ranging from finding gifts and ordering groceries to tracking deals and monitoring price drops.

Customers can also ask the assistant to compare products, add items to their baskets and complete purchases on their behalf.

The tech can remember shoppers’ preferences and previous purchases, allowing it to deliver more personalised recommendations over time.

Amazon said the assistant can also analyse photos to identify similar products, monitor prices and notify customers when items they are interested in go on sale.

Rajiv Mehta, vice president of conversational shopping at Amazon, said: “Now with Alexa for Shopping, your personal shopping agent is just a text away.”

The launch is the latest step in Amazon’s push into agentic commerce, where AI assistants increasingly handle shopping tasks and transactions on behalf of consumers.

Amazon said more than 400 million customers had used Alexa for Shopping over the past 12 months, while the number using its agentic features had increased more than eightfold since the start of the year.

Amazon recently blocked Meta’s AI shopping assistant Muse from accessing its marketplace, claiming the tool had appeared to access its online store without authorisation and store customer credentials.

It has also been locked in a legal dispute with AI startup Perplexity over its Comet shopping agent.

Amazon secured a court order blocking the tool in March, although a US appeals court overturned the restriction in August. The case remains ongoing.

Amazon has not announced when the text-based Alexa shopping service will become available in the UK.

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