Seems a few years ago, Amazon did a Black Friday deal on the Alexa small Dots at $22… seemed good… bought several to place around the house… worked as an intercom among other things.
At some point we saw that Alexa was more like “Big Brother”… listening to every word and sometimes commenting. Well Alexa has been benched… call it one of my worst purchases… good news only cost $66.00.
BTW, still a fan of Amazon… just a bit more cautious.
I have not benched Alexa, but I did change to the male voice.
I use alarms and timers often. I have enabled National weather alerts, use the system for the occasional phone call, add items to my shopping list by voice and read themvisually at the stores. I have the Ambient app which allows me to inquire data from outside and inside my house when away.
My string lights are controlled automatically during dusk to dawn. I have my bathroom and hall lights set to RED and use them as a nightlight.
I often need to know the time for various locations so ask what time it is in London. Seems most places change their clocks twice a year for some ungodly reason.
There is an app called IFTTT that allows me to say a command and perform a command like send an prewritten email or all sorts of other things I can trigger.
We haven’t benched Alexa either. We were gifted a second generation dot years ago & it was shelved for more than a year just because of the thought of the big brother situation. But we realized that Siri, OK Google, Ring cameras, web searches, etc. are all big brothery type situations so we finally hooked it up.
I use it every day for music without having to touch anything. Alexa play iHeartradio, alexa play rock music, play pop music whatever. I have bluetooth speakers that she can connect to to have louder portable sound. I also get the weather often & ask random questions. You can also use it to call the police if someone breaks in (God forbid) alexa call the police. She also notifies the status of my Amazon deliveries.
I did change her wake word to “computer” because of the word “alexa” being overused & having it activated whenever someone on the tv says alexa. Also a bit of a sci fi star trek nerd. Changed her voice to the Canadian lady…she sounds very sarcastic lol.
I also have Samuel Jackson’s voice on there (got it for 99cents), but the voice pack is restricted to asking Samuel specific questions it’s not a full time voice. He can be very explicit or R (or X cuss wise) rated if you ask him to be.
Another story about Alexa & big brother. A nephew of my BIL moved back in with his parents who had alexa in several rooms & one night he got up to use the bathroom wearing his boxer shorts & nothing else & when he came out of the bathroom one of the alexa devices started laughing. It freaked him out & when he told his mother about it she unplugged all of them.
Someone gave me a Google Home Mini a few years ago. I used it for a while, but it’s been unplugged for a few months. No one has noticed yet.
We were given one as a gift a few years back, never opened the box and regifted it a couple of years later.
I can’t remember what creepy thing it did, but mine sat unplugged for a year. I never missed the functionality, so I gave it away.
Funniest thing I’ve read all day.
Never got an alexa or any of those privacy invading units.