It turns out that Amazon’s Alexa can not only set reminders to take your dinner out of the oven and turn on your lights, it can also save you from awkward conversations too.
Alexa has been living in many of our homes since 2014, and while some people have privacy concerns, others couldn’t bear to go back to Googling things themselves instead of just asking Alexa.
Since its launch, there have been a whole array of spangly new features, ranging from slightly childish ‘cheat codes’ to plans for the home assistant to be able to mimic a dead loved one’s voice.
On one occasion, Alexa even ended up inadvertently saving someone’s life.
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One skill you wouldn’t expect the tech to have, though, is to defuse the tension during awkward social situations.
Picture the scene - you’ve had friends over for dinner, and somehow gotten onto a universally accepted no-go area like politics, religion or money.
Rather than steer your guests back into safer waters yourself, you can now delegate the task to Alexa.
All you have to do is say “Alexa, change the subject” and hopefully the controversial conversation topic will be abandoned.
Although, when you see what Alexa suggests you talk about instead, it may not be long until you and your guests are back at loggerheads.
A selection of sample conversation starters from when the feature launched in 2019 include: ‘Pineapple on pizza was the greatest culinary development of the 20th century. Discuss…” and “Is Die Hard a Christmas movie?”
Other conversation starters such as “What’s your favourite animal, and why?” and “If you could have any superpower, what would it be, and why?” may represent safer ground, but do sort of sound like avenues of last resort if a first date is going really badly.
Another useful feature you didn’t know Alexa had: did you know you can access the recordings it has made of your voice and delete them?
All you have to do is go into the Alexa app on your device, tap the menu bar on the left-hand side and go into Settings.
Then, hit 'Alexa Privacy' and go into 'Review Voice History' - this is where you'll see the audio files.
Then you can listen to recordings and delete them, or do a mass delete for a specific date range by selecting ‘Delete All Recordings’.
If you’re the kind of person who frets over your device saving a recording of you saying, “Alexa, play Radio 1,” then this is a real lifesaver.
Topics: Amazon, Technology
Simon Fearn