U.S. shoppers browsing the Amazon Shopping app can now interrupt an AI-generated product audio summary with a spoken or typed question and receive an answer before the summary continues. Amazon announced the feature, called "Join the Chat," in an April 28 blog post on About Amazon, describing it as a new interactive layer added to its existing "Hear the Highlights" audio tool.
What Amazon Announced and When
Amazon confirmed the launch in a Tuesday, April 28 blog post, describing "Join the Chat" as an addition to "Hear the Highlights" that allows the feature to answer questions during audio summaries. Rajiv Mehta, Vice President of Conversational Shopping at Amazon, is attributed to the announcement. When customers ask questions during a summary, the AI host pauses, answers the question in real time, and then picks up where it left off.
"Join the Chat" is a feature of "Hear the Highlights," which offers short-form audio product summaries on millions of product detail pages, with AI-generated hosts drawing from product details, customer reviews, and information from across the web. The broader "Hear the Highlights" experience is available to U.S. customers in the Amazon Shopping app across millions of products.
How the Feature Works
At any point in an episode, customers can ask a natural language question about the product being discussed, and the AI hosts incorporate the question into the conversation, deliver a tailored response based on product details, customer reviews, and other publicly available information, and then seamlessly continue the episode.
The feature is also designed to understand conversational context. When a customer asks a question, the AI hosts consider what has already been covered and respond with new, relevant information rather than repeating what was said.
The experience is delivered by several AI technologies working together. Each episode begins with an AI-generated script, and when a shopper asks a question, that script adapts in real time to deliver a relevant answer. According to Amazon's April 28 announcement, "advanced text-to-speech technology then brings the response to life, so the hosts reply naturally and match the tone and energy of the original episode."
As quoted in Amazon's April 28 announcement and cited by Chain Store Age, Mehta stated: "This approach creates something different: an experience that is both informative and adaptive. Customers can ask questions and actually steer where the conversation goes. Every question they ask influences what comes next, making the experience a conversation customers can join and customize."
Availability and Access
Join the Chat is now available to U.S. customers in the Amazon Shopping app on both iOS and Android devices. The feature is currently limited to users in the United States and is being gradually expanded to include more products. There is no official timeline for a rollout in other regions.
To activate the feature, customers tap a raised-hand icon to expand into full-screen view, then either type their question or use a microphone icon to ask by voice. The audio can continue playing even as users browse elsewhere in the app.
Context Within Amazon's AI Shopping Strategy
"Hear the Highlights" was first tested by Amazon in May 2025, offering short-form audio product summaries on select product detail pages with AI-based shopping experts discussing key product features. The feature uses large language models to generate scripts, pulling from Amazon's product catalogue, customer reviews, and information from across the web, and translating the content into short-form audio clips.
The "Join the Chat" launch builds on Amazon's growing lineup of AI-driven shopping tools, which includes Rufus, its generative AI assistant for product research and comparison; Interests, which continuously tracks and surfaces new items aligned with a shopper's preferences; and "Help Me Decide," which suggests products based on a person's searches, browsing, and shopping history.
Implications for Brands and Sellers on Amazon
Because "Join the Chat" draws its answers directly from product descriptions, customer reviews, and publicly available web information, the accuracy and completeness of those source materials will directly shape what the AI communicates to shoppers at a critical decision-making moment. Brands and sellers whose product listings contain vague, incomplete, or generic copy risk having the AI return thin or imprecise answers to specific shopper questions, answers that may cost a conversion. Sellers who invest in thorough, specific product detail pages and who actively manage their customer review presence will be better positioned to have the AI represent their products accurately and persuasively in this new audio-first research format.
Rather than skimming bullet points or reviews, users are now receiving interpreted and summarized answers, a shift that can complicate how shoppers discover new brands and how companies promote their products. As reviews and product specifications are distilled into spoken responses, unclear or vague content could cause the AI to misrepresent products.
Mehta confirmed in Amazon's April 28 announcement that the feature is now live and that customers can open the Amazon Shopping app to try it across supported product pages.
