The news: Amazon is retiring the Rufus brand as it integrates its chatbot with its Alexa+ voice assistant under a new umbrella, “Alexa for Shopping.” By unifying voice and web interfaces, Amazon is creating a single layer for product discovery and purchasing across devices with the experience available across the Amazon Shopping app, website, and Echo Show devices—with no Prime membership or Echo device required.

The updated experience lets users start a conversation on one device—like an Echo speaker—and continue it on another, such as a phone or laptop. For example, a student could brainstorm a science project with Alexa on their Echo, then later ask Alexa in the Amazon app to add the necessary project materials to their cart.

Amazon is also rolling out several new and enhanced features, including:

• Conversational search directly in the search bar, which allows to users ask everything from product comparisons (e.g., “Breville Barista Express vs. Pro”) to questions like “When will my AA batteries arrive?”
• Scheduled actions that automate shopping tasks, such as restocking household essentials, tracking price drops, or surfacing gift ideas ahead of birthdays—including conditional prompts like adding an item to a shopper's cart only if it hits a target price and hasn’t been purchased recently
• Expanded price history tracking for a full year, giving shoppers more context on when to buy
• AI-generated shopping guides and overviews that summarize product categories and surface key considerations directly in search results and product pages
• Advanced cart-building and reordering capabilities, allowing users to quickly add frequently purchased items (“my regular dog treats”) or build carts conversationally
• Agentic purchasing via “Buy for Me,” which can complete transactions on other retailers’ sites using stored payment and shipping details