Who needs a computer or even a phone to buy stuff online when you’ve got your voice? Amazon has just updated its new digital assistant product Echo with the ability to reorder products from the online retailer using voice commands.
Amazon users who have a Prime membership can tell Echo, “Alexa, reorder laundry detergent,” for example, and the device will automatically check to see if the user has previously ordered the item. Echo’s name defaults to Alexa but can easily be changed.
If an item hasn’t previously been ordered, Echo will search for similar items among a list of high-rated products called Amazon’s Choice and offer users the chance to order that instead. If there are no similar products available in the Amazon’s Choice selection, the item will be placed in a user’s shopping list.
It’s no surprise that Amazon is using Echo to rope people into buying more stuff online. The company also recently unveiled a selection of tiny physical buttons that people can place around their home and press to automatically reorder staples like detergent and diapers.
