PSA: Amazon’s shopping AI can now tell you if that message is a scam
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…
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, verify@amazon.com, 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. Topics AI, Amazon, Commerce, e-commerce When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Sarah Perez Consumer News Editor Sarah has worked as a reporter for TechCrunch since August 2011. She joined the company after having previously spent over three years at ReadWriteWeb. Prior to her work as a reporter, Sarah worked in I.T. across a number of industries, including banking, retail and software. You can contact or verify outreach from Sarah by emailing sarahp@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at sarahperez.01 on Signal. View Bio October 13 – 15 San Francisco Don’t miss out. The startup community will gather to answer a pivotal question: How do you build sustainably in the AI era? REGISTER NOW Most Popular Norway considers ban on camera-enabled wearable ‘pervert glasses’ Zack Whittaker Uber is laying off 10% of staff, or 3,300 people Ram Iyer AfterQuery reportedly becomes Y Combinator’s fastest-ever unicorn, now valued at $3.2B Julie Bort Apple shares ‘shocking evidence’ against former employee accused of stealing company data for OpenAI Amanda Silberling Microsoft tests fix for latest hours-long Outlook outage Sarah Perez MapQuest’s app surges to No. 1 in Navigation after refusing to rename Lake Ontario Sarah Perez Hugging Face is selling a cute $399 open source duck robot, Microduck Rebecca BellanSource: TechCrunch — Published — Category: Business