Amazon has long had to deal with the reality that owners of Echo smart speakers aren’t using Alexa, the voice-controlled assistant, to make purchases, as the company had hoped. The tech giant hasn’t given up on that dream yet. The company’s AI assistant Alexa+ is available in the U.S. and Canada starting today with new shopping-enabled features, including a shopping hub, tools to add items to recent orders, and personalized recommendations.
The company is already working on features that would allow Alexa+ to act as a shopping assistant, with features such as automated transaction tracking and automated purchases. The former feature allows you to configure Alexa to notify you when an item in your cart or list falls below a certain price range. If you also set up automatic purchases, Alexa can order products as soon as they reach your target price.
Amazon has now announced that it will turn its Echo devices with screens (Echo Show 15 and 21) into shopping hubs with an interface it calls the “Shopping Essentials” experience. From this dashboard, Amazon shoppers can track delivery status in real time, see information about recent orders, receive reminders about household items that need to be reordered, and view shopping lists and saved items.
From this screen, shoppers can also tap to see more products or add products directly to their cart and checkout.
To access the new experience, Amazon users can say, “Alexa, where’s my stuff?” or “Open Shopping Essentials.” Soon, you’ll also be able to add a shopping widget to your Echo device’s home screen.
Another new feature currently rolling out will allow Alexa device owners to add items to future deliveries at any time until the item leaves the warehouse. This isn’t necessarily exclusive to Alexa+, as it builds on a similar feature recently added to Amazon’s retail website and app, but the feature wasn’t previously available on Alexa devices.
Alexa+ also adds gift recommendations. You can now describe who you are shopping for or the occasion, and Alexa+ will display categorized product suggestions on the screen.
Amazon says Alexa+ is currently available to “tens of millions” of customers, and these new features are rolling out to users in the US and Canada. While not everyone is happy with Alexa+, the company said the percentage of users downgrading to the AI-free interface remains in the “very low single digits.”
