Amazon launched Update Me When, an Alexa for Shopping feature that pushes a notification once something a shopper is waiting on actually happens, such as a favorite brand rolling out a new product line, a musician announcing tour dates, or an author publishing a new book.
For example, customers can say things like, “Update me when Reacher Season 5 drops on Prime Video” or “Let me know when Oreo drops a quadruple stuffed cookie.”
Shoppers have to set each alert themselves for now, but I imagine it’s only a matter of time before Alexa gets smarter and starts pushing notifications about things it thinks you’ll like. For example, if you’ve already binge-watched seasons 1-4 of Reacher, it’s not that big of a stretch to imagine that you’ll want to be notified when season 5 comes out. Or if you consistently buy new Wrangler Khaki Cargo Shorts in size 38 every few months, it’d be helpful if Alexa notified you that they were on sale a few months after your last purchase.
Technically, some of these alerts have been available in other formats for years. For example, I follow my author friend Bonnie Truax on Amazon and get notifications when she publishes a new book. Those types of alerts have existed for decades. The big differences now are that: 1) You can set them conversationally instead of just on the author’s profile. 2) The feature monitors the broader web, not just Amazon’s store, which means it can trigger alerts for more than just new products and price changes.
Amazon announced the feature last Tuesday alongside other AI shopping tools it has been building including price alerts that fire at a chosen price or discount and can buy the item outright if the shopper allows it, AI overviews on search and product pages, carts assembled from past orders, and transcription of handwritten shopping lists.
