Amazon Gives Alexa More Control Over Your Shopping Cart
Amazon Gives Alexa More Control Over Your Shopping Cart
Ahead of the holiday season, Amazon has expanded Alexa with more than 100 shopping-related capabilities, pushing its voice assistant further into the unglamorous but consequential mechanics of online buying.
The first changes focus on planning a purchase. Users can ask Alexa to create and register shopping lists, check what is already on them, and add or edit products by voice. The update is aimed at turning Alexa from a tool for finding items into one that can manage the running list behind a household’s purchases.
Amazon is also extending that control to recurring orders. A customer can ask the assistant to alter a subscription schedule — changing a delivery from monthly to once every three months, for example — while also updating delivery instructions, including an address or drop-off details.
The final layer reaches into account administration: Alexa can answer questions about Prime and Audible subscriptions, as well as billing and payment issues. That gives the assistant a role not only before checkout, but after an order is placed and when something goes wrong.
The release follows Amazon’s broader push this year into AI-led shopping tools, including a shopping assistant and notifications for new products and offers. The company says use of its agentic features has risen eightfold since the start of the year, and that more than 400 million consumers used Alexa for shopping over the past 12 months.
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