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Has Amazon Ruined the Name Alexa?

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Re: Has Amazon Ruined the Name Alexa?

#91

Post by sib »

mc32 wrote: post #80
MarkLowenstein wrote: post #17

It's certainly become an inconvenient name to utter around our house, due to the responses it elicits from our countertops. So my daughter came up with the idea of referring to the device as "Amelia" whenever we talk about her. It has worked brilliantly and I suggest that everyone adopt the same convention.

Can't you just change the prompt for the device to one of the other options? Though I dunno why they can't make it use any wake word you choose.

Because different words have very different best potential performance characteristics when used as wake words.

We would have liked to enable fully custom wake words, but it would have led to bad user experiences with the device either failing to wake up too often (false negatives) or having too many false positives or both.

So we compromised by enabling more than one, but not full choice.

Re: Has Amazon Ruined the Name Alexa?

#92

Post by sib »

throwawayboise wrote: post #70
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC, the word 'Alexa' and the configurable alternatives 'Echo', 'Amazon', and 'Computer' are encoded into the firmware of the device itself with a wide variety of different accents accepted. Using an arbitrary word would mean everything the device hears would need to be constantly sent to Amazon so their servers could detect your custom wake word or you'd need to train the device to use your custom wake word, which…

> Using an arbitrary word would mean everything the device hears would need to be constantly sent to Amazon Isn't it pretty well accepted that is already happening? It's why I'll never have one of these things in my house. That and I don't like talking to machines (unless I'm cursing at them).

Nope.

Re: Has Amazon Ruined the Name Alexa?

#93

Post by gumby »

da_big_ghey wrote: post #50
reaperducer wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am acquaintances with a Siri. She's seems like a nice person, but since she works in a service industry I bet she's tired of hearing "Hey, Siri" all the time. If I was her, I'd ask for permission to not wear a name tag.

Has she considered changing the name on the tag, just at work? Just put "Jane" or something generic, or "Sarah" so it sounds similar. But yeah, it unfair that she has to be the one to change.

I almost never give my correct name for informal use (I am not a waiter, but for coffee orders and the like). Gives me a marginal amount of privacy (I mean, who cares) and makes it less likely my name will be mispronounced/misspelt with my coffee order.

If I were in a service job with a name tag I would definitely not use my real name.

Re: Has Amazon Ruined the Name Alexa?

#94

Post by sib »

Gys wrote: post #6
kowlo wrote: post #2

Would have been interesting to see data-points from before 2015...

'The year when the name Alexa was most popular is 2015. In that year, the number of births is 6052, which represents 0.311 percent of total female births in 2015.' From https://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/babyname.cgi

Right - the year after Amazon's Alexa was announced.

Re: Has Amazon Ruined the Name Alexa?

#95

Post by gumby »

ben509 wrote: post #44
jmosbech wrote: post #36

Related: Being married to an actual Siri made it easy for us to rule out one of the home automation platforms. (I asked, but somehow she didn’t feel like changing her name.)

> I asked, but somehow she didn’t feel like changing her name. That's nuts. It's just a bit of paperwork!

It's rather offensive that it has become paperwork. It's your own name after all -- if you want to change it that shouldn't be anybody else's business.

It used to work that way in California until the 9/11 hysteria swept the country.

Re: Has Amazon Ruined the Name Alexa?

#96

Post by encom »

da_big_ghey wrote: post #50
reaperducer wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am acquaintances with a Siri. She's seems like a nice person, but since she works in a service industry I bet she's tired of hearing "Hey, Siri" all the time. If I was her, I'd ask for permission to not wear a name tag.

Has she considered changing the name on the tag, just at work? Just put "Jane" or something generic, or "Sarah" so it sounds similar. But yeah, it unfair that she has to be the one to change.

Well at least your name isn't Michael Bolton!

Re: Has Amazon Ruined the Name Alexa?

#97

Post by moron4hire »

I wish these companies wouldn't anthropomorphize the systems so much. I catch my mother calling Siri "her", and my wife calls Google Assistant "her" because she has it set to a feminine voice. I try to remind our small children that it's just a computer, there is no person behind it.

It's important, because I've noticed that folks who humanize these assistants start having expectations of their capabilities that far exceed their reality. If you understand the assistant to be a crappy menu system on top of a regular, ol' Google Search, you can start to use them more effectively. My father thinks yelling the same request, word for word, will get a different response from Google. You might as well have tried typing a search into the Google website, got the wrong results, and then typed in the same search in all-caps.

There's almost no continuity between commands. I wish they would not create continuity for the extremely small subset of factoid lookup commands they've manually programmed in and just leave everything to a single, unified model that is more predictable.

I use Google Assistant to check the weather, add items to the family grocery list, play music, and entertain the kids with animal sounds. That's about all it's good for. It does it pretty well. But to expect more is an exercise in frustration.

Re: Has Amazon Ruined the Name Alexa?

#98

Post by mc32 »

sib wrote: post #91
mc32 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't you just change the prompt for the device to one of the other options? Though I dunno why they can't make it use any wake word you choose.

Because different words have very different best potential performance characteristics when used as wake words. We would have liked to enable fully custom wake words, but it would have led to bad user experiences with the device either failing to wake up too often (false negatives) or having too many false positives or both. So we compromised by enabling more than one, but not full choice.

Thanks for the insight.

Is it difficult to fingerprint a sound bite? Have people repeat it several times and again for each user that wants to use the custom wake word?

Re: Has Amazon Ruined the Name Alexa?

#99

Post by LogicX »

encom wrote: post #96
da_big_ghey wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has she considered changing the name on the tag, just at work? Just put "Jane" or something generic, or "Sarah" so it sounds similar. But yeah, it unfair that she has to be the one to change.

Well at least your name isn't Michael Bolton!

That no-talent assclown!
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