When Alexa Attacks

A couple of weeks ago, Denisa asked our Amazon Echo for the weather forecast. When it had finished giving the forecast, Alexa helpfully offered to alert us whenever there’s a severe weather alert for our area. “Would you like to enable this feature?” she asked.

Sure. Why not? I like a good severe weather alert as much as the next guy. We turned on the feature and then didn’t think anything more of it.

This morning, at 5:30am, Tomas discovered that Alexa takes her job of alerting you about severe weather very seriously. She woke him up on the Echo Dot in his room, boldly proclaiming that the National Weather Forecast had released a severe weather alert for our area. (4-14 inches of snow on our way today into tonight) Then she kept swirling a yellow light to remind him of the impending doom.

His response is perhaps best summed up by the transcript Alexa recorded:

Today at 05:31 AM on Second Floor: Audio could not be understood

Today at 05:31 AM on Second Floor: “alexa”

Today at 05:31 AM on Second Floor: “stop”

Today at 05:33 AM on Second Floor: “alexa”

Today at 05:37 AM on Second Floor: No text stored

Today at 05:37 AM on Second Floor: “alexa”

Today at 05:39 AM on Second Floor: “alexa”

I’ll stop there. Suffice it to say that not only did Alexa not stop alerting him, she also made it incredibly difficult to turn off the alert. (At least, when your mind is muddled at 5:30 in the morning.)

We’ve since added some “do not disturb” times to Alexa on all our devices, which should hopefully deal with this in the future. Actually, I tried to turn off those notifications completely, but Alexa is refusing to obey. Either she thinks we’re in dire peril, or she just doesn’t want to open the pod bay doors.

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