Personal Accounts ▪ Alexas & Parents

How many adults have you seen make fun of a two year old? My daughter, Alexa was two at the time when she was told she couldn’t come into someone’s home because it would be too confusing since they have an "Alexa."  

When she was an infant she was being asked the weather or to play songs. Once she learned her name, anytime she was asked what her name was by a stranger it was followed with laughter, a question, asking her to do something, asking if she was an Echo or a Dot or some other mocking comment based on her name. Very rarely was no comment made. That’s not normal.

As I put my daughter to bed one night, she hugged me and told me, “ Now that I’m Aria, I’m perfect. ” I  thought it was a sweet sentiment until I realized she didn’t feel she was when her name was Alexa.  

~Alexa Noelle until December 2019 

My daughter was 4 months old when I saw the first advertisement for the product. Nothing really other than a few raised eyebrows happened for about a year.  

Then it started.

People making comments, making fun of the fact she was a person, not a machine. Doctors and dentist receptionists would smile and say ‘Alexa? Oh dear, bless her.' The worst one was Santa who asked her if she always does things people ask her to do and ‘ does it get confusing in your household? ’ to which I answered as politely as I could that we didn’t have a device and to just ask her what she wanted for Christmas.

Over lockdown when she had video calls with her little friends it got worse as they started to talk to her like they talk to the device. So, I took the opportunity of being out of school because of Covid-19 and legally changed her name to Alexandra. She started school in September as Lexi and apart from one child who remembered her ‘old’ name, I feel like a weight has been lifted. It’s awful.

I maintain that it is the sheer volume of comments these girls have to deal with which could eventually drive them crazy. It’s not just one or two. It’s nearly every person they’ll come across in their day.

~Alexa until Summer 2020 

{This Mom wrote this prior to Alexa going through a legal name change in August 2020.}

My middle daughter Alexa just turned 13 in July. The AI device has devastated my entire family & obviously my daughter the most. She has had lots of negative experiences due to name calling and bullying. From teachers, waiters, friends, peer groups, the list goes on. We tried to deal with it as the device grew in popularity and wasn’t a huge issue until she started high school, but then the floodgates opened.

The final straw was in mid lockdown when she told us that she wanted to kill herself {not something she would say lightly I may add, as she recently lost her uncle to suicide}. As you can imagine, we were completely blindsided & led me to seek support from others in the same boat.  

A lot of heartache & soul searching led us to the decision to move her schools and legally change her name to Alexandra. None of us truly wanted this, but to safeguard our daughter's life that is what we did on 15th August this year & it will break my heart until my dying day.

I have accepted it and made some peace with it now, as ‘Alexa’ is still in her name {what’s a few more letters right?!} and I live in hope she will revert back to it one day. She goes by Lexi & we are all trying really hard to adjust but it’s not easy.  
I overheard my 5-year old son a few weeks ago telling his friend that you have to change your name when you get to be a teenager.

How this has been allowed/accepted is beyond me.  I am fearful that it will be too much for a real life Alexa one day. I asked Jeff Bezos in one of my many emails if he could live with that - I’ve had no reply, so maybe he can.  
~Alexa until Summer 2020 

The amount of times we had comments when my daughter said her name Alexa was virtually every time. I can't begin to tell you the number of times when we introduced Alexa and people would ask Alexa, "So, do you do what you're told then?" That's the normal response. 

In dance class, a Mom said, "I'm sorry if my child is rude to Alexa but that's how he speaks to Alexa at home and he won't know the difference!" My wife couldn't say our daughter's name to her hairdressers as they have an Alexa device and she sets it off. 

Alexa really wanted us to call her Alexandra. She said "I don't like the name Alexa because people yell it at the computer." Older people were the cruelest. It got to the point when asked her name, Alexa would say "Daddy, you tell them." 

I wish we could could turn back time and go with Sophie or Lucy. My wife is ready to change it legally. I just can't bring myself to sign the form. There's a part of me refusing to let go. I feel Amazon has robbed me of my early years with my daughter & I'm refusing to let them take that from me. I still call her Alexa but I've stopped in public and call her Alexandra. I've had too many comments! 

Last year was Alexa's first visit to Father Christmas at the local department store. She was nervous but went in with encouragement. Obviously he asked her name. Santa spent the whole time laughing and asked if she does what she's told. I said, "We're not here to talk about her name." Now she doesn't like Santa because he laughed at her name!"

When our daughter was born, we had people say "I've never heard of that name before." We're living a nightmare. Alexa is literally everywhere. 

My 5-year old Alexa said to me the other day she didn’t want to go outside anymore and wish she could just stay asleep as then nobody would make fun of her name! When I asked her what she meant, she said "people are nice to her in her dreams but in real life they make fun of her and tell her to do things." That was very shocking.

She won’t let anyone call her Alexa in public. If they do, she ends up going into a huge anxiety panic and asks to go home straight away because other people might have heard her name being called Alexa. She asked for us to move away so nobody knew her and start somewhere else with another name as people are still calling her Alexa even though we are trying to call her Lexi. It’s hard to change people who knew her as Alexa at school.

She won’t go into anyone’s house if they have an Amazon device as she knows it will turn them on and people will just erupt with laughter so she feels she is a laughing stock. She constantly says Amazon stole her name and ruined her life. She’s 5. She shouldn’t even know what that means at her age. 

Alexa's anxiety has increased hugely over the last 6 months. She has started to get social anxiety now. She used to be such a sociable outgoing little girl and now she is just a shell of the girl she once was and it’s soul destroying seeing her like this.

I have sent emails to Amazon. I email them almost every day and have done for months and months but never get a response. I honestly don’t think they care. I am seeking a councilor through the doctors at the moment and am hoping we can get her seen shortly.

We’ve had remarks from the likes of doctors and teachers.  {people who my child is meant to feel safe around and look up to} Before this device, you would have never found an adult in any form mimicking a child or making jokes about their name but it seems it’s now become a new normal for adults to do this with Alexa.  

It’s created a whole new level of bullying and the worst thing is most people don’t even realize they are doing it. Since when has it been ok for an adult to do this?

My daughter won’t go to the doctors anymore as her name comes up in big letters on the LED screen as 'Alexa' which they won’t change until it’s changed legally so she refuses to even go. 

Every aspect of her life is a struggle now and the mental effect it is having on her at such a young age is terrifying. 

I went to a friend's house with my daughters and the younger one is Alexa. The jokes started to flow from grown-ups like "Alexa what's the weather?" & "Alexa, clean up the games." I gave a look like, really? Another time, same thing. Grown people, friends of mine, making jokes at my daughter's expense. 

I have exactly ONE friend who  shuts her devices off when we come into her house. That's the tiny exception to a weird obliviousness toward how these "jokes" make me feel, even if my daughter is too young to realize it's directed at her.  
Just the other day, someone said "Alexa" in a commercial and she was like " 

Why did they name a robot "Alexa?" That's my name!"  

I have a 5-year old daughter called Alexa. She was about 1-years old when the device came out in the United Kingdom. When she was born I was constantly told how beautiful her name was, that was until Amazon happened. Almost overnight it felt like our world had crumbled.  

At first I thought I was just being mellow-dramatic as nobody understood how devastating it felt. As time went on it just got worse, the once ‘that’s a beautiful name’ soon turned into mockery. ‘Tell us a joke’ being the most heard phrase of the day.  I kid you not, even the doctor said those exact words to my then 3-year old, a person she is meant to look up to was sitting there mocking her name like it was ok like it was normal. 

As she has gotten older it’s gotten worse. She is 5 so she now understands a lot more; the advertisements on the TV calling her to ring for a pizza or to play some music has started to really confuse her. We have started to call her Lexi in public now just to avoid the mockery or situations where you can clearly see people mumble under their breath. She answers to Lexi but she introduces herself as Alexa. She loves her name and refuses to change it. We love her name too, just not the mockery it brings.  

She’s 5. She shouldn’t (nor should anyone for that matter) be subjected to such cruel bullying on a daily basis. It feels like a breath of fresh air to come across this group as I honestly felt like I was the only one out there bothered by this.  

Alexa has an enormous heart. She volunteered to help shop, wrap, and deliver Christmas gifts to help make the holiday special for a family that is homeless with two young boys.  

Alexa is over the moon excited as the volunteer takes the gifts from us. The volunteer records our names for matching purposes. I tell her my name is Lauren. " What a beautiful name.  I have a daughter named Lauren, I've always loved it. " Next, my 5-year old proudly gives her name. " Emily, such a beautiful name. Classic and beautiful. Thank you honey. " Lastly, she asks for my 9-year old Alexa's name. " Oh, hmm. ou must get teased a lot. That's too bad. " Imagine pride lost, head down and deflated by yet another adult.  

She was so excited and proud to be helping a family in need and now feels a bit crushed. She had just heard "beautiful" twice for her Mom and sister, but for her name she hears, " Oh, that's too bad. "  

As the conversation continued, I did my best to kindly let the volunteer know that Alexa is a beautiful name that we gave to her before the smart speaker was created and that yes, it stinks Amazon chose a female name as a servant role.  

Of course, Alexa's spirit is crushed and I do my best mom work to make her feel good and let her know that her name is beautiful and that she should be proud of it. 

I am telling this story because it's not isolated.  She deals with encounters like this daily. Imagine play dates while other parents yell her name in their homes. Ads, TV, radio, stores.  The list continues and continues.  She's built resiliency, we all have.  

But it's not okay.  ~Lauren Johnson, Alexa is a Human

 Imagine Being Called Alexa 

Imagine having a name that every time it’s called someone turns around and sniggers.

Imagine having a name that always prompts a joke being thrown at you or a command being yelled, even by adults to small children.

Imagine having a name that when called you have the embarrassment of several devices turning on and shouting ‘I don’t understand’ at you, causing an eruption of laugher by others. 

Imagine being too afraid to say your name that you go to the measures of changing it to something else even when you really don’t want to. 

Imagine people not inviting you over to their house anymore because you set off the devices around the house and it’s too much work to have you over.

Imagine having a name that breaches your own privacy because your name is a wake word on devices pretty much everywhere you go, and this wake word means that your conversations are then ‘listened too’ and ‘stored’ by tech giants every time someone calls you near a device.

Imagine being a young child and starting to think that being told to ‘clean the dishes’ or ‘order pizza’ was ok and growing up thinking that being treated like a servant was normal!

Imagine going to the doctors feeling poorly as a child and being asked to tell you a joke, even when you are sick. 

Imagine going to see Santa as a child only for him to ask you ‘what the weather is like tomorrow’ instead of what gift you’ve asked for.

Imagine being so fed up of all of the above that you just don’t want to go outside anymore, or worse even live.

Imagine being so fed up that you want to legally change your name or are dreading the first impression.

Imagine being Alexa. Give us our name back!   

Dear Amazon, 

I ask that as you read this, you think about your own identity and the role your name plays in that identity and your day-to-day life. Think of the sound of your name and hearing it being said aloud. Your reaction to it is immediate, uncontrolled and instinctive. Your name is not just part of your identity – it is also how your identity is identified. At your birthdays, graduations, wedding and funeral, your name is part of the event. 

Think of when people spell your name wrong or constantly mispronounce it. Do you appreciate that? Instead of taking the time to learn how to correctly pronounce your name, they give you a nickname at their convenience. 

Now imagine being met with a joke the moment you introduce yourself, and the joke is your 

name. This is the consequence of Amazon’s decision to take a name for its own profit. I speak for myself and many other Alexas when I say we cringe when we introduce ourselves now and breathe a sigh of relief when people don’t bring up the 21st century servant that Amazon has created and given our name. Alexas are not servants. We are humans. And we are not humans you give commands to. Alexas are your friends, your neighbors, your family members, your therapists, your doctors, your journalists, your nurses, your teachers, your mentors. We are people. And we have a voice too.

 All I want for my birthday (besides an end to this pandemic and a cure for Covid-

19) is my voice and identity back, and by that I mean I want Amazon to change the wake word of its Echo device and to quit marketing it as my name. I’ve started introducing myself by my middle name or by my initials to avoid the harassment, but it’s not the same. I miss my name. 

Please, please change the wake word, and stop marketing this Amazon device as Alexa. 

I canceled my Amazon membership a couple weeks ago. It felt good. I want to believe that 

Amazon is a good company, but I need you to show me that it cares about its customers and its employees. I see through LinkedIn you have a lot of Alexas working for you. Have you ever taken the time to see how their social lives or how people treat or respond to them have changed due to this? 

In a time where the world seems bleak, I challenge you to put others first. Make people, 

including your customers and employees, feel like their voice matters. And step outside of 

yourself to see how you’d feel to have your name become something that’s tied to commands. My guess is you probably wouldn’t like it either. 

If you want to hear about how my life has changed because Amazon’s decision to take my name, don’t hesitate to reach out. I have plenty of stories to share and know many others that do too.

It's official, Amazon killed my name. But @alexa99 doesn't just hurt people named Alexa. Appropriating a name is only part of a pattern of extraction and erasure that marks Amazon and the tech industry more generally. A thread from a fed-up Alexa. 

Amazon, Alexa, and the Downfall of a Popular Name - The Atlantic 

I'm angry that kids are bullied for having the name we share and I'm sympathetic to demands to  #RebrandAlexa. But even if Amazon changes the wake word to Jeff Bezos tomorrow, there are still huge social & environmental issues with "Alexa" 

"Alexa" is gendered in name and voice. @safiyanoble calls digital assistants ‘powerful socialization tools’ teaching us ‘the role of women, girls, and people who are gendered female to respond on demand’ acting to normalize subservience. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000367416.page=1

"Alexa" contributes to and emerges from rape culture. When harassed or abused, digital assistants are programmed to joke and deflect, responding with phrases like ‘I’d blush if I could’ https://bit.ly/3me0LHy 

"Alexa" contributes to and emerges from white supremacy. As @thao_pow writes in @catalyst_sts "Alexa" is a servant coded as an educated white woman, erasing that it is mostly working-class, Black, Latino, and migrant women who do domestic work. https://bit.ly/2W9voTm

"Alexa used to be a name primarily given to human babies. Now it’s mainly for robots." Amazon appropriated a name belonging to girls and women. Apple took an actor's voice for Siri. More ways women's names, voices, and labor are erased in tech.  @histoftech   

The voices of women in tech are still being erased | MIT Technology Review 

All from a company whose algorithms infamously discriminated against women in hiring. Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women | Reuters 

“Alexa” is a “privacy nightmare” from the vast data collected, to human contractors who are paid (poorly) to listen to recordings.  If You Care About Privacy, Throw Your Amazon Alexa Devices Into the Sea (gizmodo.com) 

Or how about "Orwellian nightmare"? "Voice assistants are not the most pressing threat to privacy only because they are optional. A facial recognition scanner can spy on you in a public space, but Alexa, like a vampire, must be invited into your home."  'Alexa, are you invading my privacy?' – the dark side of our voice assistants | Amazon Alexa | The Guardian 

And Amazon has big plans: "Rather than wait for and respond to requests, Alexa will anticipate what the user might want. The idea is to turn Alexa into an omnipresent companion that actively shapes and orchestrates your life." @_KarenHao   

Inside Amazon’s plan for Alexa to run your entire life | MIT Technology Review 

"Alexa" depends on exploitative and dangerous labor practices. From manufacturing.... Amazon Echo devices made by Chinese teens 'working through night' - reports - BBC News 

To warehousing and shipping.  ‘I'm not a robot’: Amazon workers condemn unsafe, grueling conditions at warehouse | Amazon | The Guardian (for labor and tech follow 

@veenadubal!) 

"Alexa" relies on natural-language processing and the carbon footprint of training large language models -- which are also immense, inscrutable, and often biased, causing harm, as 

@timnitGebru @emilymbender @mmitchell_ai 's important paper examines.  On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots | Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency 

In sum, "Alexa" is a complex system of extraction and erasure: "a vast planetary network, fueled by the extraction of non-renewable materials, labor, and data" which @katecrawford

and @TheCreaturesLab have stunningly mapped.  Anatomy of an AI System 

Maybe Amazon has killed my name. But I don’t think so. I think we human Alexas, and humans of all names, will have the last say. We will insist on technology that is not built on erasure and extraction, but on equity, justice, and human and planetary flourishing. 

~Dr. Alexa Hagerty, @anthroptimist 

The remote learning site we’re using allows us to “raise our hands” which the professor would be able to see and press a button to “put our hands down.  If I raised my hand, he would typically put it down without answering or picking me, even if I was one of the only two with my hand raised. 

It was mostly myself & one other student who would raise our hands. The fact that I was never selected out of the two of us was kind of strange.  I contacted my professor privately & asked if there was a reason that I was never selected, if he just didn’t see that my hand was raised (although he has to press a button on his end to make my hand go down), or if it was something else.

He told me he just didn’t see it and that was when he asked if I would be fine with just going by my last name since my first name “disrupts” the class." I just said fine since this particular course was only seven weeks and we were halfway through it.  

After agreeing to be called by my last name I started being called on more in class. It was definitely an unpleasant class experience.  

I was born in 1995. My Mom had no name picked out for me even after I was born. She was given a name book at the hospital and took Alexa from Alexandra. She thought she was the first to come up with the name. 

I always struggled with my name thanks to the Alexises and Alexes of the world. I finally got comfortable when dealing with people spelling my name, I'd just say "It's Alexa with an A at the end." 

Then the Amazon Alexa comes out and I'm in a new form of hell.  I work in the service industry to where I have to smile and fake laugh at the jokes while thinking "F*** you."
My family has never had the urge to get one, because I'm the only Alexa they need lol, but seriously we won't because of the disrespect it causes me. 

My breaking point was when I reached out to a bunch of lawyers and they told me to just change my name....EXCUSE ME?!?! 

Something has to be done!! 

The harassment and bullying I am taking as a 45-year old woman is too much. It gets worse everyday. 

A collective cultural dismissal of the name "Alexa" applying to anything other than an AI servant has happened, it is overwhelming.

I was born with this name. I didn't choose it. Will I have to pay to change my own name and the name of my business if this doesn't get rectified?

Amazon is too big of a company not to be able to figure out a way to address this and correct it. They are responsible and have the power to lead by example. They could change the name, or put out some service messages about bullying. 

Born in the mid 70s, I was the first Alexa and only one I knew for years and years. My parents had very common first names and felt it was hard in school etc. to be one of many in all their classes.  

Well, through my 20s people constantly got my name wrong (thanks Dynasty and Alexis Carrington!) which really sucked. I finally learned to love my name for all the reasons many of you do and it became just common enough that I didn't have to correct people constantly. I got to enjoy and feel good and confident about my name for maybe 5-10 years before this Amazon fiasco. I won't give up - it's exhausting but I'm willing to fight for it. 

My name is perfect the way it is and no blood sucking corporation will take that.