Amazon is introducing a texting feature for its Alexa AI agent, letting invited U.S. customers chat with Alexa over SMS to shop using natural language.

The rollout, announced on a Friday in early November, arrives just before the holiday shopping season and follows Amazon‘s decision in September to block Meta’s Muse agent from querying its site.

Customers who receive the invitation can enable the feature and then text Alexa to search for items, add them to their cart, and complete purchases.

The text-based agent extends the shopping-focused upgrades recently added to Alexa, so it can also manage lists, monitor prices, search for products across the web, compare items, and check order status.

Users can send a picture of an item or of someone wearing an outfit to find similar listings on Amazon.

Over time, Alexa is expected to learn users’ preferences and use that knowledge to suggest products.

People who are not invited can join a waitlist, and Amazon says the feature will be rolled out more broadly in the coming weeks.

The move reflects a broader industry trend of consumer platforms building their own AI agents to capture this new interaction channel.

The article notes that DoorDash, for example, said third-party agents had only placed hundreds of orders on its platform in total, and that it plans to keep developing its own text-based agent, which launched in September.

Amazon‘s approach mirrors the texting-style interaction offered by agents like Muse or Instinct, but keeps the shopping experience inside Amazon‘s own ecosystem.