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Only a Small Percentage of Users Buy Stuff Through Alexa, Report Claims (arstechnica.com)
Analysts have been aggressively optimistic in their predictions about the growth of consumer shopping via virtual assistants like Amazon's Alexa, but a new report claims that only a small fraction of Alexa device owners shop with voice commands. And most of those who do only try it once or stick to a limited range of products. From a report: Two people who have been briefed on Amazon's "internal figures" told tech business publication The Information that only around 2 percent of people who own Alexa-equipped devices like those in Amazon's Echo line have ever made a purchase with Alexa. Of that 2 percent, about 90 percent tried it once and did not attempt it again after that, one of The Information's sources said. And even those users who regularly use Alexa to shop mainly do so for small purchases like household supplies.
I don't have any of these (spy) devices, but can't imagine I'd actually shop for stuff using it - certainly not things I hadn't already purchased before - because there's no way to review the items, like you can using a browser, to ensure it's really what you want. For things I've previously bought and am simply re-buying, like laundry soap, it might offer some, small, convenience, but not enough to have an always-listening device on my house. These things have always seemed more like a solution in search of a problem.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
The truth is the Alexa, Google Assistant, etc. are remarkably unintelligent and undiscerning. They can do very constrained and stereotyped tasks fairly well, but introduce a minimum of ambiguity, and they start spinning their wheels badly. Even when dealing with simple queries, their lack of understanding is irksome - e.g. if you tell any of them "Do not, under any circumstances, give me the weather forecast" they all promptly and efficiently give you the weather forecast. It will be some time before these gadgets become useful for significantly more than grins and giggles and party games.