Alexa+ can now buy discounted items for youChoose your item and set your price in advanceIt’s part of a wider Alexa+ shopping upgrade
Amazon has announced a range of new shopping features rolling out to its Alexa+ AI assistant – including a new option to automatically buy products that you’re after when they hit a lower price, which sounds like it might not be all that good for your bank balance.
This was actually announced back in February, but is now rolling out to early testers in the US and Canada, as per The Verge. It’s also part of a new Shopping Essentials interface upgrade that is appearing first on the Echo Show 15 and Echo Show 21 displays.
Here’s how it works: you tell the bot about an item you want to buy, and a price threshold to watch out for. You then have the option to give Alexa+ permission to automatically buy that product once it hits that price, using your default purchase and delivery details.
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It’s reassuring to see some level of control there – but I can imagine queueing up a variety of deals that I want to take advantage of, forgetting about them, and then being met with a flurry of purchase notifications once the next sales season rolls around.
Are you ready to let Alexa+ do your shopping for you? (Image credit: Amazon)
Alexa+ is also going to be able to keep an eye on your current shopping cart and your wishlists for potential deal opportunities, and the same auto-buy feature can be found in the Rufus AI assistant that lives on the Amazon website and in the Amazon mobile apps.
As for the wider Shopping Essentials upgrade, it brings all of your important Amazon data together in one place for ease and convenience: current orders, items out for delivery, products on your shopping lists that you’re planning to buy, and so on.
Other additions coming to Alexa+ are personalized gifts suggestions – so you describe who you’re buying for to the AI and it picks out some ideas – and the option to add new items to a delivery at the last minute, right up until it leaves the Amazon warehouse.
Alexa+ remains in beta testing and is still invite only, with users in the US and Canada able to request access: here’s how to go about it. You’ll also need one of the newer smart displays too – the Echo Show 8, Echo Show 10, Echo Show 15, or Echo Show 21.
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