Alexa Morales, named after her slain father, Alexis Morales Jr., wore her name proudly. But after Amazon launched its voice service, also called Alexa, in 2014, people began speaking to Morales differently.
When Erim Corado gave birth to her first child, she wanted a name to honor her boyfriend Alexis Morales Jr., who died of a gunshot wound a few months before their daughter arrived in 1993.
“When I hear my name now, it’s not good thoughts, it’s like, tensing,” said Morales, 28, a pharmacy technician and student in Bridgeport, Conn. I interviewed more than 25 women and girls named Alexa and several parents of Alexas to see how the voice assistant’s rapid takeover of workplaces and homes had altered their feelings about their name and identity. The Alexas I interviewed ranged in age from 5 to 55, and they live throughout the United States, Mexico, Canada and Europe.A few were indifferent to the connection or amused by it. But the majority were tired of interruptions from the bot and by jokes at their expense.
By 2018, Morales began to go by Lex. She stopped buying from Amazon, too, partly because of the device name and partly because of what she has heard about the working conditions inside the company’s warehouses.Corado understands her daughter’s decision to go by Lex but said it “feels like another connection lost” to her daughter’s father. “He deserved to have his name honored, not to turn it into something belittling to the daughter he never got to hold,” Corado said.
Phillip Hunter, the head of user experience for Amazon Alexa Skills from September 2016 to March 2018, said he now recognizes the unintended consequences.
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