Amazon Transforms Audio Summaries Into Interactive AI Dialogues

Amazon’s U.S. customers can now chat via voice or text with the artificial intelligence hosts of the company’s “Hear the Highlights” feature.

This feature already provided AI-generated audio summaries of key product features. Now, with the addition of a “Join the Chat” feature, it can also answer questions during those summaries, Amazon said in a Tuesday (April 28) blog post.

When customers ask questions during the summary, the AI host will pause, answer the question in real time, and then pick up where it left off with the summary.

Join the Chat is now available to U.S. customers in the Amazon Shopping app, on both iOS and Android devices. Hear the Highlights, of which Join the Chat is a part, is available for millions of products, though not all products.

To use these tools, app users go to a product detail page; tap play on the Hear the Highlights button, if there is one, to hear the audio summary; tap the raised-hand icon to initiate Join the Chat; and either type or use the microphone icon to ask a question.

Rajiv Mehta, vice president, conversational shopping at Amazon, said in the post that customers can use Join the Chat at any point during a Hear the Highlights audio summary to ask questions such as “Do people find this sweater itchy?” or “Is this product dishwasher safe?”

“The AI hosts incorporate the question into the conversation, deliver a tailored response grounded in product details, customer reviews and other publicly available information, and then seamlessly continue the episode,” Mehta said. “Customers aren’t interrupting the experience — they’re part of it.”

Amazon began testing the Hear the Highlights feature in May 2025, saying these AI-powered voice summaries make “product research fun and convenient — it’s like having helpful friends discuss potential purchases to make your shopping easier.”

The company extended Hear the Highlights to all customers in May 2025, with some observers saying this feature could replace user-created reviews as the main source of product information.

The PYMNTS Intelligence report “Getting to Know You: How AI Is Shaping the Future of Shopping” found that voice commerce is one of the ways in which retailers are responding to consumers’ demand for personalized, AI-driven experiences that offer convenience, customization and efficiency.