I've had an Echo Show (the Alexa device with the camera and screen) for a few years now and it has a feature where you can say "Alexa, scan this" and it will scan a barcode that you hold up to the camera, decipher it, and add the product to your shopping list. When I first got the device I found it would work for products shipped in from overseas but not domestic products. So I kind of stopped using it. At the weekend I was messing around and tried it again and found that it now seems to understand everything I throw at it - even down to very local things like Anathoths Jam, Tip-top bread and NZ-produced Coca Cola.

I'm not sure how long this has been the case but does anyone have any thoughts about what this might mean? There have been rumours of Amazon setting up operations here for a while, could it be that this is a step towards that outcome? Or something more mundane like just wanting the Echo Show to be more useful to users in NZ?