What I discovered when I asked Amazon to tell me everything Alexa had heard

> But we have two Echo devices in our household and the data shows whether a request came from the Echo Plus in the kitchen or the original Echo on our daughter Coco’s bedside table, where it has sat since around her ninth birthday. [...] So I now know that it was Coco who wanted to know what it is to be omnisexual and what omniscient means.

Doesn't it feel wrong to the author to snoop through that private information? And publishing it in a news article definitely crosses a line.

I mean, so is committing every sound ever heard through that microphone to a database used to train a voodoo doll of their daughter to better guess what she might be able to buy next.

Oh shit.... I never realized until now that's exactly what the point of Alexa is. I thought the point was like a different UI to Amazon. As in "being able to buy by clicking OR sounding must lead to a strictly larger number of sales than being able to buy by clicking only". So you can imagine my confusion on people telling me that Alexa isn't a good UI.

Of course. The point is to snoop on people to make better "recommendations". Dystopian.

That's not necessarily true.

Amazon is also a ecosystem. Alexa shows you notifications from Amazon like the status of a delivery. It's able to call others (great for family).

Amazon has also the fire kid tablet, fire TV etc.

And if I already use Amazon anyway I'm quite happy if Amazon would recommend me good products I like.

For plenty of things, Alexa is a very good UI.