Amazon is Bringing Alexa to Their Shopping App on iPhone

Ed Lauder

March 16, 2017

2 Min Read

Amazon has announced its plans to bring their AI assistant to their shopping app on the iPhone.

Virtual assistants are becoming more and more complex and can perform a myriad different tasks. Google, Apple, Amazon, Intel, Samsung... They all either have their own AI assistants, or are working on them. They do all tend to have female names and voices, yet Intel's unnamed virtual assistant will be the first genderless one ever made. Even though Google Assistant is technically genderless, they did give the AI a female voice. But, what we never thought would happen is see companies bring their AI assistants to their competitors devices, yet this is exactly what Amazon has done.

According to Amazon's website, they're bringing Alexa to their app on the iPhone. This will start from today, but we are expecting a full rollout later this week. This means that they've developed a mobile version of Alexa that can work on mobile devices, not just Amazon's own hardware such as the Echo speaker and Fire TV.

It does seem as if Amazon is looking to showcase Alexa's capabilities as a virtual assistant via their shopping app, in order to boost their reach and influence potential customers to buy their products, such as the Echo speaker.

Alexa will be able to do a lot via the app, such as answer basic questions regarding the whether, geography, gigs happening near you, traffic, calendar dates and even the sport scores.  You can even order an Uber and a coffee at Starbuck using Alexa through the app. Alexa can also play you Kindle books and Amazon Music whilst you do your online shopping on your phone.

Of course, Alexa can also help you do your shopping via the app. You can give it basic instructions such as order an item, track an order and search for products. In order to use Alexa within Amazon's app, you just need to press the little microphone icon you'll find once you update said app.

Amazon didn't mention anything regarding a version of Alexa for Android phones.

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