Amazon has not given up on making Alexa a virtual shopping assistant. On Wednesday, the company announced that Alexa+, the improved Alexa Experience, can help grocery stores from home using more natural conversations and requests.
The feature will work with Amazon Fresh or other grocery partners working with Amazon, the retailer noted. Food delivery from partners like Uber Eats is also available.
Instead of simply listing the ingredients you need in your voice, Amazon showed you how to chat with Alexa to help you create a shopping list.
For example, the company asked Alexa to get “everything you need for a banana bread,” and demonstrated that they wanted to cook “Bob's Red Mill Pancake Mix.” Oh, they needed syrup and some more eggs too.
Alexa understood these natural language requirements and turned them into grocery list items.
Furthermore, Alexa was able to adjust the amount on the spot when asked to “make 2.5 gallons instead of 2.5 gallons” of milk, for example.
The assistant was also able to recommend what to cook for a 5 year old dinner guest by suggesting pasta options that kids tend to like.
The company explained that this type of shopping is to use your voice to shop through a kind of “flow of consciousness” style chat.
The upgraded Alexa+ Experience will be shipped in March as an upgrade to your existing Alexa device. The service costs $19.99 a month, but it's free for all Prime members.
