Amazon Launches ‘Join the Chat’ for Interactive AI Audio Summaries

Amazon began testing “Hear the Highlights” in May 2025, using large language models to combine product information, customer reviews and publicly available web content into short audio summaries. The feature now covers millions of product pages, shifting product research from reading to listening and becoming a key part of Amazon's expanding lineup of AI shopping assistants.

Amazon launched “Join the Chat” in the United States on April 28, 2026, with support for iOS and Android. Users can ask questions by voice or text while listening to a summary. The AI hosts pause the audio, respond in real time based on the conversational context and then resume from the same passage. As of the first quarter of 2026, “Hear the Highlights” had attracted millions of users and logged more than 40 million minutes of playback.