Amazon has begun testing a new purchase agent of him, a feature he calls “buy for me” with a subjugation user, the company announced in a blog post on Thursday.
If Amazon does not sell something that users are looking for, the Buy For feature will show products to users that other websites are selling. Then, users can choose and seek to buy one of these products without ever moving away from the Amazon shopping app.
Amazon is the latest company that reveals a buying agent of him, joining firms such as Openai, Google, and Purplexity, which have displayed all similar agents that can visit websites and help users make purchases. Amazon is already the platform of most people for whatever they want to buy online, but buying for me can allow Amazon to capture even more e -commerce business than today.
After the scenes, Amazon’s shopping agent will visit an external website, select a product that requested a user and complete the username, transport address and payment details to buy it, according to Amazon.
Amazon says the new trait of agents purchasing has been powered by its models Amazon Nova, except for anthropic Claude. One of those models may be NOVA ACT, an AI agent Amazon discovered earlier this week that can use websites autonomously.
Amazon said in the aforementioned blog post that Buy for uses Encryption to “safely place” your billing information on third party pages, such that Amazon cannot see what you are ordering from outside its platform. This is a unique approach compared to Openai and Google agents, which require people to complete their own credit card information, as well as the Puplexity’s agent, who has a prepaid debit card to make purchases.
Submitting information to your credit card to it, which is prone to hallucinations and errors, can give some users a serious pause. In Techcrunch’s experience, purchasing agents of he often take a long time to process the requirements, and often stuck somewhere along the line.
Amazon is essentially asking users to believe that his agent will not randomly buy 1,000 pairs of socks instead of 10, for example. It is also demanding that they accept less control over the experience of purchases. If a customer has to return or exchange an order, the purchase for me will direct them to the digital store from which the agent he made the purchase.
We will soon see how many people are willing to dive.
