Amazon is using AI to help shoppers tell the difference between real messages from the company and fake ones from scammers.

Amazon customers in the USA can now ask Alexa for Shopping to verify whether a message, email, phone call or text came from Amazon, getting a clear answer in seconds. This draws on a catalogue of billions of messages sent by Amazon teams globally.

Every communication submitted for verification is automatically reported to Amazon, feeding intelligence that helps take down bad actors and protect more customers.

Every year, 360,000 customers contact Amazon customer service with the same question: “Is this message from Amazon real?” Now, customers can ask the Alexa for Shopping AI assistant.

“Scammers thrive when customers can’t easily verify whether a message is real,” said Scott Knapp, vice president at Amazon (www.amazon.com). “That’s why we built a tool to put certainty directly in customers’ hands, in real time, when they need it most. It’s part of our broader commitment to educate and empower customers and protect them against scams.”

Alexa for Shopping already helps customers find products, compare items and manage their carts through natural conversation. Now, it also helps them stay safe. By integrating communication verification into Alexa for Shopping, Amazon is bringing trust and security directly into an experience its customers already use every day.

The communication verification tool adds to the list of ways to verify Amazon communications. Earlier this year, Amazon launched verify@amazon.com, an email address available to anyone in the world, Amazon customer or not, where people can forward a suspicious message and receive a verification response confirming whether it’s genuinely from Amazon.

Customers can also use a dedicated verification form on Amazon’s customer service pages, which walks them through submitting communication details and provides an instant result.

While other tools analyse general patterns such as suspicious URLs or common scam language, only Amazon can definitively confirm whether communication originated from its systems. The technology uses AI to compare what a customer received against a record of every message Amazon has sent by analysing who sent the message, what it says, when it was sent and how it’s formatted. The tool only confirms a message is real when it’s completely certain.

If someone receives a communication that the tool cannot verify as coming from Amazon, it guides them to report it directly and provides additional tips on protecting themselves against scams, keeping their account secure and reaching Amazon support.

Launching in the USA through Alexa for Shopping (www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/how-to-use-amazon-shopping-ai-assistant), the communication verification tool will expand to additional regions over time.