Amazon’s Alexa is now available in the company’s US shopping app and website, bringing a wide range of new capabilities. Customers can now log into the Amazon app or website to have Alexa support them with suggestions, instructions and several helpful features while shopping.
Alexa can now track prices, bringing a native solution to a problem that browser extensions like Keepa have long asked to solve. Now you can simply ask Alexa to track an item’s price and even place an order automatically once the item reaches a target price.
Then, there’s more information to help you make better buying decisions. You can ask Alexa for an item’s price history, which lets you understand its price volatility and determine whether the price is currently stagnant, at an all-time low, or at an all-time high.
Amazon says Alexa can now help you compare categories and items, make recommendations, and reorder essentials. However, it should be noted that some of these features were introduced in 2024 with the Rufus shopping assistant. Rufus failed to succeed despite Amazon’s occasional aggressive push.
Amazon is now replacing Rufus with Alexa for its shopping experience. said Daniel Rausch, vice president of Alexa and Echo The Verge Alexa is “more deeply integrated, more capable, and more accessible.” Alexa will retain Rufus’ market knowledge, but her arrival means LLM will be more effective in helping customers browse and research products.
In addition to the Amazon website and app, Echo devices can also play a key role in enhancing shopping experiences. Because Alexa can store conversations, any information shared with Alexa can in turn allow the AI to tailor your shopping experience based on those conversations.
Sharing an example in the announcement, Amazon explained how you can talk to an Echo device about a project, and the next day you can go to the Amazon website and app and ask something along the lines of “please suggest supplies for the project we’re talking about,” and thanks to Alexa saving that conversation, you’ll get relevant search results.
Another important thing to emphasize is that Alexa for Shopping will not be a fully polished feature with minimal bugs. The announcement blog says that Alexa will become “more personal and more useful over time,” so the service itself will improve based on the data it receives from you and other customers in general.
Source: Amazon
