Amazon has launched “Update Me When,” a new capability inside its Alexa for Shopping AI assistant that sends personalized notifications when something new or relevant happens that could lead to a purchase. The company announced the feature on Tuesday as part of a broader set of AI-powered shopping updates, and the examples Amazon gives are wide-ranging: tracking when a favorite brand debuts a new product line, when a new season of a favorite TV show drops, when an artist announces a concert tour, when an author releases a new book, or when a tech company ships a new product.

The launch signals a shift in Amazon’s AI shopping strategy. Historically, Alexa mainly answered product questions when shoppers asked directly. With “Update Me When,” the assistant can anticipate moments that might prompt a purchase before the shopper even thinks to ask. Initially, consumers must configure these alerts themselves, but Amazon’s direction suggests a future where alerts are generated automatically or suggested as shoppers browse products they care about.

The article also highlights other Alexa for Shopping features that Amazon has been working on. The most useful, according to the piece, is existing price tracking: users can ask the assistant to alert them when a product reaches a specific price or discount percentage, and the feature can even auto-buy the item if those conditions are met. Amazon has also been using Alexa to source personalized deals, create shopping guides, build carts with items from past purchases, track a product’s pricing history, show AI overviews on search results and product detail pages, transcribe handwritten lists into cart items, and compare items.

Taken together, these features move Alexa from a passive voice-query tool to a more proactive shopping companion, one that monitors for events and conditions that might lead to a purchase. The article notes that Amazon continues to experiment with how AI can improve the shopping experience, and “Update Me When” is the latest example of that experimentation.