The news: Amazon and Walmart expanded the capabilities of their AI shopping assistants ahead of the holiday season.

• Amazon introduced a “text to shop” feature for Alexa for Shopping that allows customers to build carts, ask for product recommendations, make purchases, and track orders through a text thread.
• Walmart’s Sparky can now generate carts from handwritten shopping lists, help shoppers find items in store, suggest healthier ingredients, and generate recipes, alongside other features.

Why it matters: Both retailers are making their shopping assistants more useful for everyday tasks, with the hope of curbing consumers’ interest in using third-party AI tools like ChatGPT or Gemini and keeping them more firmly tied to Amazon’s and Walmart’s ecosystems. But that strategy only works if those features align with how customers are already shopping, rather than trying to get them to adopt different buying habits.

In the case of Amazon’s new text-to-shop feature, the retailer is trying to succeed where its competitor failed. Walmart has tried on at least two separate occasions to get customer buy-in for the offering—most recently in late 2022—although neither attempt appears to have been successful with shoppers. Amazon’s endeavor is further complicated by the fact that Alexa for Shopping’s text responses will include ads, per Digiday, which could undermine user trust and further limit adoption.

Implications for retail: Both Alexa for Shopping and Sparky will play a larger role in holiday shopping this year. Roughly 1 in 3 US holiday gift buyers plan to use Amazon’s assistant for shopping-related tasks, while around 1 in 4 will turn to Sparky, per Tinuiti. That gives both companies a significant opportunity to prove to customers just how useful their AI tools can be, which could set the stage for increased engagement and usage beyond the holiday season.