Amazon is giving you a new way to order food through Grubhub and Uber Eats with Alexa without having to endure an awkward exchange just to add fries. Amazon said the entire process is meant to be conversational, building your order in a similar manner to ordering in a restaurant.
That means changing your order, modifying an item, or adding a drink mid-conversation is as simple as saying so, without having to wait for Alexa to finish talking. Amazon said Alexa will only step in when you need help or have questions.
“For years, voice assistants have operated on a call-and-response model: you ask, it answers,” Amazon said in a press release. “Now when you start an order, you’ll see a new conversational window where you can naturally explore, decide, and order with minimal back-and-forth with Alexa.”
The update is part of the company’s broader push to make its digital assistant more useful and conversational after launching Alexa Plus, its souped-up, generative AI-powered version of Alexa, last year.
The feature is rolling out to Alexa Plus subscribers with Echo Show 8 devices and larger, which will show changes to your order in real time. Amazon did not provide a timeline for the rollout or say whether it will come to other gadgets.
To get started, connect your Grubhub or Uber Eats account through the Alexa app. You can do this by selecting More > Alexa+ Store > Food & Reservations.
Saved restaurants and past orders will automatically sync to your Alexa and you can search for restaurants by name or cuisine, reorder a previous meal, or start fresh. You can ask Alexa to “show me desserts,” “show me some Italian restaurants,” or offer kid-friendly suggestions, for example, and you’ll see a summary of everything in your cart before purchasing. You’ll get updates on the order in the “For You” section, too, or you could just ask Alexa where your food is.
Amazon said the update is “just the start of our long-term vision for how customers can interact with Alexa.” The company has invested heavily in revamping its Alexa assistant, rebuilding its traditional command-and-control voice assistant into the AI-powered Alexa Plus that understands and responds to natural language. The hope is that the more conversational and intelligent assistant will adapt to users’ needs and help Amazon stay relevant in the crowded AI assistant market.
Amazon said it plans to expand the more conversational ordering experience to cover things like grocery shopping and travel planning in the future.