Making AI Headlines · Page 2
Amazon Turns the Shopping List Into a Conversation With Amazon
· New York time
Amazon is adding a feature that lets customers shop by texting Alexa for Shopping. Users can describe an item or send a photo, and the assistant searches Amazon listings and texts back recommendations. The shopping list, once a private note to remember what to buy, gets an eager correspondent with a store attached. The practical attraction is clear. A shopper who cannot remember a product's name can describe it or use a picture rather than work through a series of search terms. Alexa can return matching options in the same exchange, putting discovery and purchasing close together. That convenience also serves Amazon's retail business. The assistant is not a neutral friend who happens to know every shop in town; it searches Amazon listings. A list written on a refrigerator does not suggest alternatives, but it also does not have a preferred marketplace. Texting the list to a retailer gives the retailer a much more active role in the trip. The feature turns an ordinary request into an invitation to browse. A customer still decides what to buy, but the choices arrive through the company hoping to complete the sale. This is the great promise of conversational commerce: the store will listen carefully, respond promptly and never forget that it is a store. At last, even the milk has a sales representative.
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