My Alexa is guessing things about me — and it's getting weird

Corrie Aune for BI My relationship with Amazon Alexa is at a breaking point.

I want to keep things professional: "Alexa, set a 5-minute timer," I tell her.

"Turn off the living room lights." She, an AI assistant in which Amazon has invested tens of billions of dollars, wants to connect on a deeper level, uncovering my personal interests, shopping habits, and getting to know the real Dan .

As a relatively private and paranoid journalist, I've tried to keep Alexa — and all tech companies — at arm's length.

She's sussed out private details like my favorite movies and underwear preferences anyway.

She's clearly wormed her way into my routine enough that I refer to her as "she" instead of "it." Large language models and advertising and e-commerce companies like Amazon are masters at inference, or compiling profiles about us from scraps of data picked up here and there throughout our interactions.

Often, when their depth of knowledge is revealed to us, it's creepy.

Things got uncomfortable between Alexa and me last month when she casually mentioned my dog's name, which I'd never told her.

"Conrad's all set for his next cleanup session," she announced after I asked to add paw wipes to my Amazon shopping cart.

I paused.

"How did you know my dog's name?" I asked.

"I learn from our interactions over time, including past conversations and account activity," Alexa said.

Further questioning led to similarly vague responses.

My relationship with Alexa started off casual and efficient — until Alexa Plus came along.