Amazon About – Amazon’s new ‘About You’ feature aims to sharpen AI product recommendations, but users are discovering the tool’s observations about their personal lives can be uncomfortably candid.
The notification arrived as a routine update to the Amazon shopping experience. but for many. it landed with the awkward. biting precision of a judgmental relative. Launched in May as part of a push to leverage artificial intelligence. the “About You” feature was designed to show shoppers exactly what the e-commerce giant thinks it knows about them.
By navigating to the “Account” and “Shopping preferences” tabs in the mobile app. web. or desktop. users are finding a digital dossier—a list of inferences compiled from years of purchase histories. search queries. saved lists. product reviews. and conversations with the Alexa for Shopping assistant. The goal. according to the company. is to help shoppers understand the data shaping their recommendations. with the option to edit or delete any observation that misses the mark.
Social media platforms, particularly Threads, have turned into a sounding board for the findings. The results are often startling. One shopper shared a screenshot showing Amazon’s profile of her claiming she “has flat buttocks. ” leaving her “literally speechless.” Another discovered the system had determined she “has a husband”—and. specifically. that the “husband has skinny legs.” Others found the tool pinpointed habits as granular as “Uses phone in the shower to read Kindle books. ” a level of observation that prompted one user to simply ask. “I mean yes but wtf.”.
These disclosures are not merely technical outputs; they are mapping the intimacy of private consumer life. Some dossiers have documented emotional states and living conditions with jarring bluntness. One user reported the system noted she “does not trust people easily” listed under her hobbies. while another found a list that progressed from “has cats” to “treats cats as biological children” to. finally. “has husband.” On Reddit. a shopper noted the system had even deduced their lack of culinary expertise: the tool correctly identified that they “do not know what truffle is supposed to taste like.”.
In our own newsroom, several reporters tested the tool on Tuesday morning with varying results. One account incorrectly identified an editor’s partner’s name, yet accurately tracked a slow-but-steady trend of kitchen-appliance upgrades. Another reporter found the system correctly ginned up her specific preference for organic produce.
The feature represents a rare. direct bridge between a consumer’s private activity and the usually opaque AI profile built to monetize those behaviors. As users continue to pull back the curtain on these dossiers. the line between helpful retail personalization and unwanted digital surveillance feels increasingly thin.
Amazon About You AI shopping data privacy consumer habits Alexa