Alexification

You may be an Apple person, and so are a Siri devotee. Or you may have embraced the Google ecosystem, and consider Google Assistant as your go-to disembodied helper person. Others may name their virtual employee of the month as Cortana or Bixby, Athena or Cubic, Mycroft or SILVIA. But if you're a person who uses a smart speaker, then you join more than a quarter of that crowd by starting your query about the weather or setting an alarm or asking about the plural of "nieces and nephews" by saying "Alexa." (It's "niblings", by the way.)

Originally designed in Poland as Ivona, and subsequently bought by Amazon and rechristened as Alexa with a hard "X" so it would be easier to recognize, the computer voice and conversational system was rolled out in 2014. To be accurate, the device is actually not called by that proper name. Rather, that is the moniker of the underlying software for the Amazon Echo device and its various offspring like the Dot, the Plus, the Studio and the Show. But regardless of the form factor, size and fidelity, the devices all have the same feminine persona at their core, and so get lumped together as an Alexa.

When Amazon launched the device it was regarded as a curiosity at best, a white elephant at worst. It was inaccurate and confused as often as it was right, and one wondered if Jeff Bezos has flushed so many millions down the toilet. After all, for every idea like Jobs and the iPhone, or Musk and Tesla, there's Facebook, now Meta. Zuckerberg hung his hat on virtual and artificial reality as the future of tech, and even changed his company's name to reflect that. But at this point in time that's a bet that looks dicey at best, causing more than one analyst to wonder if the company will go the way of MySpace. On the other hand, Amazon's early entry into the voice and AI space gave them a toehold that has turned to solid ground. And the market and their share of that space reflects their early entry and mastery.

Not content to churn out self-standing iterations, they are seeking the Alexafication of all things that can connect. For sure there are TV's and headphones and watches that you can talk to and will report back as needed. But with the Internet of Things, that net is widening to anything than can house a WiFi or Bluetooth receiver. Want your room a little darker? Just talk to your Yoolax Motorized blinds, and the glare is gone. With the Rachio Smart Sprinkler, if your lawn looks a little dry all you have to do is tell the old girl to give it a drink. And with GE's new Alexa-enabled washing machine, dump your basket of stuff in and close the lid. Then tell it what type of clothes are in there and the kind of stains they have, and it fill figure out the cycle, automatically dispense the right amount of specific soaps, and keep you appraised of progress as it rub-a-dub-dubs. No, it won't fold the laundry, but you might be able to train your robot vacuum to do that.

As more and more things acquire the Alexa connection, Amazon does have one potential problem: the more entrenched it gets, the more general it becomes. Kleenex didn't want to become kleenex. Oh, sure, it wanted to be the tissue that you reached for first, the one you asked for at the store, the product against which all others are measured. But just as xerox and brillo and dixie cups (all lower case, not initial caps) are now common verbs and nouns versus proprietary products, Amazon risks its unique moniker becoming so ubiquitous as to become generic. It's not hard to imagine a not-too-distant future where you when your partner asks you a question you can't answer, and your reply is "Don't know. Go alexa that."

Meanwhile we will see more and more things connected to our favorite online lady. There's already an Alexa-enabled shower head that lets you sing along with your favorite tunes, an Alex-enabled dog camera that also can dispense treats, and an Alexa-enabled toothbrush that coaches your morning routine. What's next? Autos? Handbags? Mailboxes? It won't be long before you get strange looks from the neighbors for talking to your garbage can. 

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Marc Wollin of Bedford is alexaing more. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.