Amazon announced on Wednesday that its consumer AI assistant, Alexa for Shopping, can now identify whether incoming messages purporting to be from the retailer are fraudulent, TechCrunch reported. The tool checks suspect communications against the company's internal messaging records to verify their authenticity.
Roughly 360,000 customers contact Amazon customer service every year to ask whether a specific message is genuine or a scam. The new AI verification tool, accessible via the Amazon website and mobile application, handles those inquiries directly.
The retailer said the system can "definitively" confirm whether a message originated from Amazon by evaluating it against billions of communications sent globally. The AI inspects sender details, message content, timing, and metadata, and Amazon expects the detection mechanism to improve as more customers submit suspicious alerts.
Common impostor communications targeting customers have included fake order confirmations, Prime membership renewal notices, account suspension alerts, package delivery warnings, and fraudulent job offers. Earlier this year, Amazon launched the email address [email protected] to let recipients forward suspect emails for review, alongside an online submission form on its support portal.
Product updates to Alexa have increasingly emphasized shopping assistance. The assistant currently sources personalized deals, builds shopping guides, reorders frequent purchases, summarizes products, and transcribes handwritten lists.
On Tuesday, Amazon introduced an Alexa feature allowing customers to set alerts for commercial events, such as brand launches, book releases, or new records.
