Amazon is testing a new AI-powered shopping feature called “Buy for Me”, which promises to take the hassle out of online shopping—even beyond Amazon’s own platform.

Announced in a Thursday blog post, the new tool is designed to find and purchase products from external websites when items aren’t available on Amazon itself—marking a bold step into agentic AI and autonomous shopping.

How “Buy for Me” Works

If you search for something Amazon doesn’t carry, the Buy for Me AI agent kicks in. It:

1. Scans third-party websites for the product.
2. Presents the best-matching items directly within the Amazon app.
3. Lets you confirm the purchase, while the agent fills in your:
   • Name
   • Shipping address
   • Payment info
   • All without leaving Amazon’s interface

This essentially makes Amazon your universal shopping gateway—no more jumping between tabs or entering your credit card over and over.

What’s Powering This New AI Shopping Assistant?

• Amazon Nova AI models
• Claude by Anthropic
• Possibly the newly announced Nova Act, a specialized agent designed to navigate and interact with websites autonomously.

Nova Act enables the AI to visit sites, select products, and carry out checkout flows on its own, all while using encryption protocols to keep your data safe.

Unlike competitors such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, or Perplexity, Amazon’s agent can actually complete purchases end-to-end—without user input for payment. Other agents either:

• Require manual payment entry, or
• Use preloaded debit cards (as in Perplexity’s case).

Is It Safe to Let AI Shop for You?

That’s the big question.

While Amazon says user data is encrypted and secure, AI hallucinations and logic errors are still very real. What if the agent:

• Orders 1,000 items instead of 10?
• Selects the wrong product version or seller?
• Can’t handle return or exchange processes smoothly?

Amazon says users will be redirected to the original retailer to manage returns, giving up some of the convenience and control Amazon shoppers are used to.

“You’re trusting AI with your wallet,” one critic pointed out on social media.

Will Users Trust AI to Shop for Them?

This move could further entrench Amazon as the default starting point for all online shopping, even if it doesn’t stock the product itself. It’s also a clever way for Amazon to capture affiliate-style revenue or data on purchasing trends across the web.

But it also introduces new risks, from misorders to loss of transparency in the shopping experience. Early testers have reported that AI shopping agents are slow, and sometimes get stuck or fail to complete transactions.

The real question:

Are users ready to surrender their shopping carts to AI?

Key Takeaways:

• Amazon Buy for Me lets users purchase third-party items without leaving the Amazon app.
• Powered by Nova AI and Claude, it handles checkout autonomously.
• Uses encryption to protect billing info, though Amazon won’t be involved in returns.
• Offers convenience but raises trust and accuracy concerns in an age of imperfect AI.

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