Amazon launches AI-powered Alexa feature to help customers verify message authenticity

Amazon is turning to AI to help fight scammers, the company announced on Wednesday. The retailer said some 360,000 customers every year reach out to its customer service department wondering whether a message they received from Amazon is real or a scam. Now, customers will be able to ask Amazon’s consumer AI service, Alexa for Shopping, to help answer that question instead.

The company said its AI can “definitively” confirm whether a communication originated from its own systems by checking it against the billions of messages Amazon has sent globally. The AI analyzes the sender information, content, timing, message metadata, and more, to determine authenticity. Amazon said the system will improve as customers report more suspicious messages, helping it to spot scams more effectively in the future.

The new AI capabilities follow on Amazon’s earlier attempts to address the growing scam problem, which includes fake order confirmations, Prime membership renewal alerts, account suspension warnings, package delivery notifications, and job scams.

Earlier this year, Amazon launched an email address, [email protected], that allows anyone to forward suspicious messages to the company and receive a response that confirms whether the email was a real message or a scam. It also offers an online form on its customer service site that provides the same assistance.

The feature’s addition is another example of how Amazon has shifted its product strategy around Alexa to focus more on how it can assist with shopping-related questions and provide proactive help. Today, the assistant can source personalized deals, create shopping guides, help customers reorder their everyday items, offer AI product overviews, transcribe handwritten shopping lists, and more.

On Tuesday, the retailer also added an Alexa feature that lets customers set alerts when something new or relevant happens, like a favorite brand launching a new product, the release of a new book from a favorite author, or an artist dropping a new record.

Alexa for Shopping is available from both the Amazon website and mobile app.