Amazon was arguably the first tech company to truly popularize the concept of voice-powered shopping with its Echo devices and Alexa voice assistant, but it has quite a bit of competition now - particularly from other tech giants, like Apple and Google.

Now, Amazon is going to have to compete with Walmart as well. The brick-and-mortar retail giant has partnered up with Google to bring "Walmart Voice Order" to the public.

Voice Order will let anyone who uses Google Assistant in some form – whether it's through a smartphone, speaker, display, or another gadget – purchase products directly from Walmart's online shopping portal by simply telling the AI what they want to order (or add to a shopping list).

Assistant will read the item's name back and inform you of its price. Apparently, Voice Order is also capable of remembering your past orders to make future shopping a bit faster. For example, if you just say "order water," it will likely assume you mean the Dasani 24-pack you purchased a few days prior.

As TechCrunch notes, there is a downside to using Voice Order: unlike Alexa and Amazon, Assistant is not directly tied to Walmart as a first-party shopping platform. This means that you first need to ask Assistant to open up Voice Order before you can use it. It's a small inconvenience, but still worth noting if you happen to be in a rush.

At any rate, Voice Order should roll out to all Assistant users by next month, so if you don't have access to it right away, wait a few days and try again.