If people don’t draw the line here, there is no line anymore.
Recently, in an effort to make its Alexa-powered devices more useful, Amazon added more than 500 cues for activity-appropriate music to its software. This would normally not be a notable development as tech companies and refine their software with such updates as a matter of course. However, amid the fairly mundane commands such as “classical music for sleeping” or “music for exercising,” there’s one trigger for a much more intimate activity.
In case you haven’t intuited, that activity is sex. Amazon has included and, as such, Alexa will respond to a request for “baby-making jazz music.”
(Note that’s NOT a request to listen to a baby performing jazz music, which would be adorable, but also pretty much unlistenable.)
Here’s how the Echo and other Alexa-driven devices work in a general sense:
According to Billboard, the data Amazon collected demonstrated that the requests for “sexy” music were most frequently made at 5-6 p.m., which suggests that those who like to soundtrack their sex may not have jobs that occupy bankers’ hours.
While the rollout of this new feature has been the subject of much coverage and only some surprise, it appears that Amazon is just following the lead of its third-party partners in this development as Alexa had this “skill” (courtesy of a condom company) prior to the announcement.
Image via Amazon.
The feature is just one more small encroachment into the personal corners of our lives, but a machine listening to its owner’s most private moment is being received as more “amusing” than “scary.” Which means we’re cool with Amazon in our bedroom, as long as it’s making our lives a little easier, even in the weirdest ways.
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