Amazon launches an AI shopping assistant for the search bar, powered by Alexa+
Quick Answer
Amazon has launched 'Alexa for Shopping', a personalized AI shopping assistant that replaces Rufus, enhancing the shopping experience with voice and touch capabilities.
Quick Take
Available to U.S. customers, it provides tailored recommendations, product comparisons, and can even manage purchases across various online retailers, raising concerns about AI autonomy and privacy.
Key Points
- Alexa for Shopping offers personalized recommendations based on user habits and purchase history.
- Users can ask questions via the search bar or chat window for tailored shopping guidance.
- The assistant can track prices and schedule recurring orders for essentials.
- It features a 'Buy for Me' option to shop from other online stores.
- The launch follows Amazon's introduction of a 30-minute delivery service in several U.S. cities.
📖 Reader Mode
~2 min readWhether you like it or not, Amazon continues to put AI at the center of the shopping journey. The company announced Wednesday “Alexa for Shopping,” its new personalized AI shopping assistant, powered by Alexa+.
Notably, the experience will replace Rufus, its generative AI shopping assistant that launched in 2024. According to the company, Alexa for Shopping is designed to offer a voice- and touch-enabled shopping experience across mobile, desktop, and Echo Show smart displays. While Rufus focused on helping customers discover and compare products, Alexa for Shopping is meant to provide more personalized recommendations and automate the shopping experience across Amazon and other online retailers.
Now available to U.S. customers, Alexa for Shopping can answer anything from “What’s a good skincare routine for men?” to “When did I last order AA batteries?” Users can type their question into the main search bar or the dedicated Alexa for Shopping chat window, and Alexa will provide tailored answers and recommendations, and even create custom shopping guides. The company says the assistant understands customers’ habits, preferences, and purchase history to bring “that connected, personalized assistance to how you shop” and to make the assistant “more personal and more helpful over time.”
Beyond answering questions, Alexa for Shopping can compare products, track prices, and even schedule recurring orders for essentials like pet food or paper towels. If you want to automatically add something to your cart when it goes on sale, you can just tell Alexa, “Add this sunscreen to my cart if the price drops to $10.”
Additionally, the assistant can go beyond Amazon’s marketplace, shopping other online stores and using its “Buy for Me” feature to handle the purchase for you, which could be seen as convenient but also a little controversial, given the growing concern around AI autonomy and privacy.
The launch of Alexa for Shopping comes on the heels of Amazon introducing its 30-minute delivery service, “Amazon Now,” in dozens of U.S. cities and a new AI-powered feature that generates real-time conversational audio responses to customer product questions.
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.
Lauren covers media, streaming, apps and platforms at TechCrunch.
You can contact or verify outreach from Lauren by emailing laurenf.techcrunch@gmail.com or via encrypted message at laurenforris22.25 on Signal.
— Originally published at techcrunch.com
Want this in your inbox every morning?
Daily brief at your local 8am — bilingual EN/中文, free.
More from TechCrunch
See more →
AI chip startup Etched defies skeptics, hits $10.3B valuation from big-name investors
AI chip startup Etched has achieved a $10.3 billion valuation after a $300 million Series C funding round, led by Sequoia and supported by notable investors like Andreessen Horowitz. The company claims to have developed innovative low-voltage chips for AI inference, significantly enhancing performance and reducing costs, with $1 billion in orders already booked.
