A BBC report suggests that children with the name Alexa are being bullied because of Amazon Echo devices – is it time for a change?
Smart speakers are becoming increasingly popular in homes across the globe, but it’s having unexpected side effects – and for people named Alexa, the existence of Amazon’s popular voice assistant has become the new bane of their existence. A new report from the BBC details how parents of children named Alexa are challenging Amazon to change or remove Alexa as a wake word for its devices. Children called Alexa are reportedly being bullied for sharing a name with the Amazon Alexa voice assistant, with other children (and, in some cases, teachers) issuing them commands as they would the smart assistant. But should Amazon change Alexa’s name – and how feasible is it at this point? To state the obvious, bullying is bad. Anyone that’s experienced it in their childhood knows how alienating it can be for children whose name has gained a weirdly specific technological context over the past few years. It might be easy to dismiss for some, but if a child is having to legally change their name to escape scrutiny, then it’s clear that there’s a problem. And it’s not the issue around Amazon’s smart assistant. We’ve also previously noted that the typically feminine-sounding AI devices and their names can perpetuate a sexist stereotype that says women are just subservient assistants.
