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An older article, and specifically about their Super Bowl ads, but a fascinating answer to a question I had directly from the source at Amazon.

CharlesW 4y ago
For anyone who's curious, it's typical for Alexa to respond to pre-recorded mentions of her name. Last night, ours woke to "Alex" while watching The Traitors. (Speaking of being intrusive, lately Alexa has also been very aggressive about promoting other Alexa capabilities to the point that my kids asked me to fire her. It's looking like Siri + Homebridge will allow me to do that.)
- chasd00 4y ago
  > Alexa has also been very aggressive about promoting other Alexa capabilities I was wondering it that was just me, it seems a lot of responses are now ending with "...by the way, did you know i can...". I sometimes listen to NPR ( please don't judge ) and i get the "...we still don't have your zip code..." a lot but i think that is an NPR thing and not an Alexa thing.
  - delecti 4y ago
    It's definitely not just you. I use the "Good Morning" skill nearly daily (which responds with a joke or a little fact about the date), and about 1/3 of the time, before the actual response, she'll interrupt to ask that I setup voice recognition so she knows my name.
- scubbo 4y ago
  While I heartily recommend you to explore other options, there's a solution to that infuriating behaviour: https://fosstodon.org/@scubbo/109412458604860895 https://fosstodon.org/@scubbo/109412458604860895
  - CharlesW 4y ago
    Thanks! I found it a few messages down: "Alexa, stop 'By The Way'" Alexa will then reply, "I will snooze my suggestions…for now." (The foreboding pause was implied.)
    - minutillo 4y ago
      And the suggestions will restart in a few days. What we did is add "stop by the way" as a custom command to our "goodnight" routine, so the thing is reminded every single night that these suggestions are unwelcome. The annoyance maximization team at amazon hasn't deployed countermeasures to this yet.
    - scubbo 4y ago
      Haha, yeah, not a fan of that :( anecdotally, they haven't restarted for me yet (activated it ~6 months ago), but I really wish there was a permanent option.

CharlesW 4y ago

For anyone who's curious, it's typical for Alexa to respond to pre-recorded mentions of her name. Last night, ours woke to "Alex" while watching The Traitors. (Speaking of being intrusive, lately Alexa has also been very aggressive about promoting other Alexa capabilities to the point that my kids asked me to fire her. It's looking like Siri + Homebridge will allow me to do that.)

chasd00 4y ago
> Alexa has also been very aggressive about promoting other Alexa capabilities I was wondering it that was just me, it seems a lot of responses are now ending with "...by the way, did you know i can...". I sometimes listen to NPR ( please don't judge ) and i get the "...we still don't have your zip code..." a lot but i think that is an NPR thing and not an Alexa thing.
- delecti 4y ago
  It's definitely not just you. I use the "Good Morning" skill nearly daily (which responds with a joke or a little fact about the date), and about 1/3 of the time, before the actual response, she'll interrupt to ask that I setup voice recognition so she knows my name.
scubbo 4y ago
While I heartily recommend you to explore other options, there's a solution to that infuriating behaviour: https://fosstodon.org/@scubbo/109412458604860895 https://fosstodon.org/@scubbo/109412458604860895
- CharlesW 4y ago
  Thanks! I found it a few messages down: "Alexa, stop 'By The Way'" Alexa will then reply, "I will snooze my suggestions…for now." (The foreboding pause was implied.)
  - minutillo 4y ago
    And the suggestions will restart in a few days. What we did is add "stop by the way" as a custom command to our "goodnight" routine, so the thing is reminded every single night that these suggestions are unwelcome. The annoyance maximization team at amazon hasn't deployed countermeasures to this yet.
  - scubbo 4y ago
    Haha, yeah, not a fan of that :( anecdotally, they haven't restarted for me yet (activated it ~6 months ago), but I really wish there was a permanent option.