Amazon now lets shoppers text Alexa to buy things, after blocking Meta's Muse from its site

Amazon is joining the text-your-agent trend, on its own terms. Shoppers can now text Amazon's Alexa agent to find and buy things, Ivan Mehta reports for TechCrunch, just ahead of the holiday season.

What it does

Selected US customers will get a text inviting them to turn it on. From there, they can search, add to cart and buy using plain language. Built on Alexa's recent shopping upgrades, the agent can also manage lists, track prices, search across the web, compare products and check order status. Send a photo of an item, or of someone wearing an outfit, and it finds similar listings. Amazon says Alexa will learn your preferences over time and suggest items. Everyone else can join a waitlist, with a wider rollout in the coming weeks.

The context

Back in September, Amazon cut off Meta's Muse agent from searching its store. Now it's offering its own agent through the same channel Muse and Instinct use: texting.

It's a pattern. DoorDash said last month that third-party agents had placed only hundreds of orders on its platform in total and that it's focusing on its own text agent. Uber recently said outside agents booked four rides in its busiest October week.

Why it matters

The big platforms are drawing a line: AI shopping, yes, but through our agent, which knows our catalog, our prices and your purchase history. For anyone building general-purpose shopping agents, that's a growing list of doors closing. For shoppers, it means the agent helping you choose works for the store.

Scoreboard update: AI +1. Amazon puts a shopping agent in your text messages, and keeps rival agents out.

Stay undead.