Family favourite gadget, Alexa, is ruining Christmas

Amazon’s Alexa and Echo dot smart AI devices are ruining Christmas for its owners by making announcements of parcels being delivered and their contents.

With the secrecy of Christmas becoming harder to keep each year, parents are getting frustrated with the bots and their announcement functions.

41-year-old, Lizzie Nuttall from Wrotham, Kent, had some explaining to do when her and her 10-year-old daughter, Alice, were sitting in their kitchen when Alexa announced that a £130 InstaX camera was on its way for delivery.

As something Alice had been asking for throughout the year, there was no hiding the fact this was meant to be a secret kept until the 25th of December.

When speaking to The Sun, Nuttall explained that daughter Alice tried to cover up the spoiler by insisting that she hadn’t heard anything. Lizzie continued to say that “she clearly had and her surprise was ruined.”

Amazon had recently stated that, “From November 17, Alexa will no longer reveal the name of items likely to be gifts to prevent spoiling surprises.”

The Amazon spokesperson has also stated that owners can change this function in the app to never hear item names. Or, when checking out an item, it can be marked as a gift making it so Alexa will never reveal item details of certain purchases.

Twitter users express their problems with how their Alexa and Dot devices may be ruining their Christmas’s.

https://twitter.com/jack_stoten/status/945287319191543808?s=20

Words by Drew-Alexandra O’Keeffe

Photo by Fabian Hurnaus from Pexels

Feature photo by bruce mars from Pexels

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