Apps & Consumer
Amazon's shopping AI can now flag scam messages
Amazon's Alexa for Shopping AI can now definitively tell users whether a message claiming to be from Amazon is real or a scam.
Amazon is turning to AI to help fight scammers, the company announced Wednesday. About 360,000 customers a year contact Amazon’s customer service department asking whether a message they received is legitimate or a scam; now, customers can instead ask Amazon’s consumer AI service, Alexa for Shopping, to make that call.
Amazon says the AI can “definitively” confirm whether a communication originated from its own systems by checking it against the billions of messages the company has sent globally. The system analyzes sender information, content, timing, and message metadata to determine authenticity, and Amazon says it will keep improving as customers report more suspicious messages.
The new capability builds on earlier anti-scam efforts. Earlier this year, Amazon launched a dedicated email address, [email protected], that lets anyone forward a suspicious message and get a response confirming whether it’s genuine; the company also offers an online form on its customer service site that does the same thing. Common scams the company has been fighting include fake order confirmations, Prime membership renewal alerts, account suspension warnings, package delivery notifications, and job scams.
The feature also reflects a broader shift in how Amazon positions Alexa: less a general assistant, more a shopping-focused helper. Today, Alexa can source personalized deals, build shopping guides, help customers reorder everyday items, provide AI product overviews, and transcribe handwritten shopping lists. On Tuesday, Amazon also added a feature letting customers set alerts for things like a favorite brand’s new product, a new book from a favorite author, or a new record from an artist. Alexa for Shopping is available on Amazon’s website and mobile app.
Why it matters
The tool addresses a support question that some 360,000 customers ask every year, and Amazon says the system will keep sharpening as more customers report suspicious messages, giving it a growing dataset to catch scams earlier.