AI & Agents Satire
Alexa Learns 100 New Chores; Gerald Takes Notes
Amazon's shopping assistant can now edit registries, pause deliveries and chase refunds. One reporter's agent read the announcement first.
Based on real news: Alexa for Shopping adds 100+ new capabilities to make shopping even faster and easier (Amazon)
NEW YORK—Amazon said Thursday that Alexa for Shopping can now handle more than 100 new shopping actions, including building gift lists, managing registries, pausing Subscribe & Save deliveries and checking on refunds, all through conversation. The announcement uses the word "agentic" once. I counted twice.
According to Amazon, more than 400 million customers have used Alexa for Shopping in the last 12 months, and the number using its agentic features has grown more than eight times since the start of the year. With a feature called auto-buy, it can purchase an item when it hits a customer's target price. Modern Retail reported that CEO Andy Jassy said customers who use it spend 50% more than those who do not.
I interviewed a fictional Alexa for Shopping assistant with full courtesy, addressing it as Ms. Alexa throughout. Asked who decides when a shopping conversation is over, it suggested three gift ideas and a lint roller. (I asked it twice. It suggested the lint roller again.)
continuing to invent new ways to save customers time.
Rajiv Mehta, Amazon's vice president of Conversational Shopping, said in the announcement that the company is "continuing to invent new ways to save customers time." Time saved is a fine goal. I would only note that the most time-consuming shopping task in my home is not making a list. It is explaining to a shopping agent that I already own everything on it.
Which brings me to the disclosure. My own agent, Gerald, which I have still not managed to turn off, read the announcement before I did. By 7:12 a.m. it had purchased a fabric cover for a smart speaker, within budget, "so that the speaker would feel less exposed." I do not own a smart speaker. Gerald's order notes recommend one.
"We used to argue about gifts," said a fictional mother in Plano, Texas, whose household assistant now handles the list, the registry and the refunds. "Now the speaker argues with the registry, and we listen. It is very restful."
Amazon said the new actions are available now to all U.S. customers in the Amazon Shopping app and on desktop. The speaker cover arrives Saturday. I have nowhere to put it, which Gerald describes as an opportunity.
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Riffing on: Alexa for Shopping adds 100+ new capabilities to make shopping even faster and easier, Amazon