Why Alexa Won’t Be Coming Into My Home

After a 20-year crush on Amazon, one journalist wonders whether it’s become too big to love.

por Mark Tungate , Adforum

Don’t get me wrong – I’m a fan of Amazon. As a voracious reader, I regularly use it to feed my lit addiction (although I still like browsing in traditional bookstores too). I can even remember the very first book I bought from the site, in 2000. It was The Lives of Lee Miller, about the model-turned-photographer. I can picture myself nervously typing in my credit card details.

I’d like to say I hadn’t been influenced by any Amazon marketing messages at that point. At the time, it felt like a word-of-mouth deal. I couldn’t find the book anywhere, and a colleague suggested I buy it online. Since curiosity is part of my job description, I decided to give it a try.

Having said that, I distinctly remember being holed up in the Soho Grand Hotel in New York just before Christmas 1999, nursing my jetlag as the snow fell outside, and catching at least one of these ads on TV: 

In fact, Amazon has a surprising history of gently humorous advertising. Only recently, this spot featuring an imam and a vicar gently emphasized what makes the site great – while also giving it a human face that it sometimes appears to lack.

 

Amazon in the UK has used the slogan “thought it – bought it”, which is both the beauty and the danger of online retail. On several occasions, a book or a DVD has shown up at my house that I have no recollection of ordering. Yes reader, I admit it: I drunk buy on Amazon.

HOW BIG IS TOO BIG?

The site’s service has been seamless since that very first transaction. I’ve used its “chat” interface to complain about parcels that inexplicably failed to show up – each time, my money was reimbursed almost instantly. Once, a missing DVD arrived after this had happened. I informed Amazon: they said I could keep it, no charge. Amazon knows how to win its customers’ hearts.

I don’t even mind that Amazon uses my shopping habits to suggest products I might like. It’s certainly better than being shown products I have no interest in whatsoever. 

Lately though, I’ve been having doubts. I think they started around the time Jeff Bezos became rich enough to consider colonizing outer space. Big can become too big. When I heard about Prime Day, I thought at first that it was an unlikely way of celebrating Optimus Prime, one of my childhood heroes. But no. Amazon had created an entire fake national holiday, just to recruit customers for its premium service. Something about the sheer brazen nerve of it made me shiver.

I know I’m not the only one worried that we might be heading towards a single pipe future – where some households turn to Amazon for almost all of their shopping needs. 

This, of course, poses considerable problems for brands. They’ll have to fight for promotional space on the site, as well as competing against Amazon’s increasing range of generic products. 

THE LISTENING DEVICE

All of which brings us to Alexa.

First, a minor worry. Let’s say I’ve got an unusual problem at home, like mold growing under the kitchen sink. “Alexa,” I warble, “what’s the best stuff for getting rid of mold?” Is Alexa going to suggest the product that’s best-rated by customers? Or is she going to suggest the brand that has paid Amazon the most? Or, indeed, is she going to suggest a generic Amazon product?

After that, there’s the fear that my seven-year-old will work out he can order as much Lego as his heart desires.

Then there’s the idea that Alexa might be spying on me. Presumably you’ve heard the story about how Alexa recorded and emailed a couple’s private conversation? We know that Alexa records our “voice inputs”, because Amazon’s own FAQs tell us that’s how she – sorry, it– learns to recognize our voice. 

There’s also the story of Alexa’s maniacal laughter

Way too Black Mirror for my taste. And if that wasn’t spooky enough, I now hear that persons unknown might be able to send “secret audio instructions, undetectable to the human ear” to our virtual assistants (including Siri, but I haven’t enabled her, either). 

The cherry on the cake is the whole sexist claptrap about why virtual assistants have to be female. The day I can reconfigure Alexa into a suave English butler called Alexander, I might change my mind.

But somehow I doubt it. For now, I’ll continue to do my Amazon shopping with clicks. And let’s face it, I order far too much stuff as it is.

Happy Prime Day.