{"id":35385,"date":"2019-12-06T12:28:06","date_gmt":"2019-12-06T12:28:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thevoiceoflondon.co.uk\/?p=35385"},"modified":"2019-12-06T12:28:06","modified_gmt":"2019-12-06T12:28:06","slug":"family-favourite-gadget-alexa-is-ruining-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/family-favourite-gadget-alexa-is-ruining-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"Family favourite gadget, Alexa, is ruining Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Amazon\u2019s Alexa and Echo dot smart AI devices are ruining Christmas for its owners by making announcements of parcels being delivered and their contents.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>With the secrecy of Christmas becoming harder to keep each year, parents are getting frustrated with the bots and their announcement functions.<\/p>\n<p>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 \u00a3130 <em>InstaX<\/em> camera was on its way for delivery.<\/p>\n<p>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 25<sup>th<\/sup> of December.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-35400\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/64\/2019\/12\/black-amazon-echo-on-table-977296-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"5568\" height=\"3712\" \/><\/p>\n<p>When speaking to The Sun, Nuttall explained that daughter Alice tried to cover up the spoiler by insisting that she hadn\u2019t heard anything. Lizzie continued to say that \u201cshe clearly had and her surprise was ruined.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Amazon had recently stated that, \u201cFrom November 17, Alexa will no longer reveal the name of items likely to be gifts to prevent spoiling surprises.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Twitter users express their problems with how their Alexa and Dot devices may be ruining their Christmas\u2019s.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Dear <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/AmazonHelp?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@AmazonHelp<\/a> Alexa is ruining Christmas for the kid!! I need to turn off these delivery notifications!! My kid is like mom the Ipad case with keyboard you ordered has been delivered o_O I had to play y crazy! It was one of her gift! Killin me smalls!<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Toya (@toya10) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/toya10\/status\/940994541749972992?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 13, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">My brother got an Amazon echo dot for Christmas. <\/p>\n<p>My dad is interrogating him and threatening to take away his Christmas presents if he doesn&#39;t tell him about his girlfriend &#39;Eliza&#39;. <\/p>\n<p>Alexa is ruining lives.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Sophie\ud83c\udf08 (@sophiediana13) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/sophiediana13\/status\/946320913951322112?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 28, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/twitter.com\/jack_stoten\/status\/945287319191543808?s=20<\/p>\n<p>Words by Drew-Alexandra O&#8217;Keeffe<\/p>\n<p>Photo by\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pexels.com\/@fabian-hurnaus-354720?utm_content=attributionCopyText&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_source=pexels\">Fabian Hurnaus\u00a0<\/a><\/strong>from\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pexels.com\/photo\/black-amazon-echo-on-table-977296\/?utm_content=attributionCopyText&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_source=pexels\">Pexels<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Feature photo by\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pexels.com\/@olly?utm_content=attributionCopyText&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_source=pexels\">bruce mars\u00a0<\/a><\/strong>from\u00a0<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pexels.com\/photo\/man-in-santa-claus-costume-716658\/?utm_content=attributionCopyText&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_source=pexels\">Pexels<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"><p>&nbsp;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Amazon\u2019s 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,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":476,"featured_media":35402,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[1332,3681,3769,4450,5723,6113,6756],"class_list":["post-35385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","tag-christmas","tag-lifestyle","tag-london","tag-news","tag-social-media","tag-technology","tag-voiceoflondon"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/476"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35385\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.westminster.ac.uk\/thevoiceoflondon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}