While Amazon 's Alexa is a well-known component of the retail giant's Echo smart speakers, the digital assistant is branching out to everywhere from cars to Motorola phones .
Before all that, however, Amazon is taking Alexa to iOS as the chirpy AI integrates with Apple's mobile devices in the latest version of Amazon's app .
Getting Alexa to chime in is as simple as hitting the microphone button on the search bar at the top of the screen. Despite being part of a shopping app, Alexa can do a lot more than order the occasional Wish List splurge.
Alexa on the Amazon app works much like its smart speaker counterpart, with the ability to track past orders, look up best-selling items, tell a joke, check weather and news, stream tunes via Prime Music, find your latest Kindle ebook purchase, and a whole suite of other skills .
Though iOS and Android both have their own companion apps for Alexa, the updated Amazon app allows Alexa to function on a smartphone on its own without relying on any additional devices.
That said, the Amazon app still needs to be installed and running for the feature to work, and isn't built-in like iOS' own Siri assistant (or the upcoming Huawei Mate 9 , which is getting a special model just for Alexa functionality).
Alexa support for iOS rolls out today and is expected to hit all users in the US by the end of the week. An Amazon representative tells us that an Android version is also in the works.
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