Why Alexa won't wake up when hearing "Alexa" in Amazon's Super Bowl ad (2019)

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.

I wonder if there's a way to identify audio from speakers. IT might not work for higher end speakers or lower end microphones, but I'm sure the limited frequency range from speakers, and perhaps artifacts of audio compression that might not be noticeable to humans, would identify non-human audio. I've seen a similar approach used for visuals, separating an image at the point of recording based on the type of light source – artificial light having different properties to natural light.

My friend has an Alexa. It's not an unusual for it to suddenly respond to something happening elsewhere in the kitchen, like a YouTube video on a laptop.

My echo dot repeatedly self-commands during Amazon Story Time, which was hilarious at first but is now kind of frustrating.

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.)