Starting from July 1st, Alexa will no longer be able to make purchases on Amazon. This decision was announced by Amazon, who will be removing the feature that allows Alexa to add items to Todoist and AnyList lists through voice control.
Users will no longer be able to create lists using third-party applications. According to the statement released on their developer site, Amazon will be eliminating the shopping function in the new generation of Alexa. This means that as of July 1st, users will not be able to use list skills or the list management REST API to access Alexa’s shopping and to-do lists through skills or apps.
What does Amazon’s ban mean? If you currently use Alexa to manage your to-do list on Todoist, you can simply say «Alexa, add buy milk to my to-do list.» With this command, Alexa and its skill for this application automatically add «buy milk» to your to-do list. However, after July 1st, this action will no longer be possible through voice command with Alexa, and users will have to manually add the task in the app.
In response to this ban, Amazon informed The Verge that developers can still integrate voice-controlled list management with Alexa into their applications, but they will no longer have direct access to Alexa’s lists. Sarah Zonouzi from Amazon explained, «We are making changes to how developers create lists. They can now integrate our custom voice interaction model into their skills to enable voice control and list management.»
AnyList mentioned to the same outlet that they are working on a custom skill with a specific voice interaction that they hope to have ready by July 1st. However, the co-founder and CEO, Jeff Hunter, noted that the downside will be that users will have to say, «Alexa, tell AnyList to add apples to my shopping list,» instead of simply saying, «Alexa, add apples to my shopping list.»
Todoist stated that they have no plans to develop a new custom skill. «We have decided to suspend our integration with Alexa before July 1, 2024,» said Omar Samuels.