Amazon Alexa everywhere, and that might be a problem.
At CES 2017, the voice assistant kept popping up in unusual places. At a booth for smart home integrator Legrand, there were outlets used for plugging in lamps and appliances that will work with Alexa (in addition to the lights and appliances themselves). At the Dish Network booth, a demo for Alexa let me quickly change channels by voice and find Tom Hanks movies. A watch called the Martian Mvoice lets you push a button to activate Alexa. The Genesis G90 sedan, you can ask Alexa to set the temperature and lock the car. There’s even this weird lamp. All good so far, right?
And yet, is this the future we really wanted?
The problem is that Alexa is not aware of any of the other gadgets. My assistant doesn’t really know about the watch or the car or the television. It’s not context aware at all, so Alexa doesn’t know to activate only the car functions in the car or deal with TV options on the couch.
The issue is most obvious if you have Alexa near your television at home. In a few cases, the speaker will…