Amazon Beefs Up Voice-Assisted Shopping - DTNS 5268
Daily Tech News Show
Tom Merritt
4.8 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 13 May 2026
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Amazon renames its shopping assistant to Alexa and adds new features. Plus two brothers who wiped out 90 US government databases after being fired.
Starring Tom Merritt and Sarah Lane.
Links to stories discussed in this episode can be found here.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, May 13th, 2026, Wednesday the 13th. We tell you what you need to know, give you important context and help each other understand. |
| 0:18.6 | And today, Amazon's got a new voice for shopping, which probably isn't new to you. |
| 0:23.4 | That's a familiar voice. |
| 0:24.8 | I'm Tom Merritt. |
| 0:25.6 | And I'm Sarah Lane. |
| 0:26.7 | We are both familiar voices, and we are going to start with what you need to know with that big story. |
| 0:33.9 | Amazon has rebranded its voice assistant in the Amazon shopping service, both in the app and on the web, |
| 0:40.5 | and added the Amazon website availability to the Echo Show. So you can now shop on the Echo Show, |
| 0:47.2 | which is great for Amazon. I don't know if you'll like it. There was a voice assistant if you went to the Amazon app or the Amazon website called |
| 0:54.3 | Rufus. That launched back in 2024. Rufus could answer natural language questions like a |
| 1:00.5 | typical chatbot, but it was limited to helping you find and compare products. |
| 1:05.1 | Didn't use your personalized shopping or anything, couldn't answer questions about anything else. |
| 1:10.6 | The newly named |
| 1:11.7 | Alexa for shopping adds the ability to personalize its answers and answer more |
| 1:17.8 | general questions so it can draw on data from your habits on amazon.com but also from |
| 1:23.0 | interactions that you have with echo devices I didn't figure you would be sure how to help me with that. |
| 1:29.3 | Thank you, Echo, for launching in the middle of this description. |
| 1:32.3 | If I wasn't wearing headphones, mine would be awake as well. |
| 1:36.3 | Users ask questions either in the main search bar on Amazon.com |
| 1:41.3 | or a dedicated chat window. Examples include what's a good skincare routine. |
| 1:48.1 | Something you couldn't have asked Rufus. This one will be like, oh, here's some products that |
| 1:51.4 | would be good for that. My coffee maker isn't working. Can you help me troubleshoot it? Oh, |
... |
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