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by extraAccount 1817 days ago
Exactly. And I don't think anyone could have predicted that people will complain about it so late. But there are other issues that they probably didn't forsee. People have complained that they are all female as well, but I could see why an engineer would want to mimic Star Trek or didn't think in detail about giving it a gendered name and voice to start with.

Other voice assistants aren't as easy to pronounce as Alexa as well; Mycroft, Siri, Ok Google, Bixby.
2 comments
Brian_K_White 1817 days ago
So far in this whole thread I still haven't seen anyone mention Cortana, even in a list like yours that included Mycroft!

I don't know I just like the image of MS's product being that irrelevant.

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moonbug 1816 days ago
wait, Windows has a voice agent?
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onion2k 1817 days ago
Other voice assistants aren't as easy to pronounce as Alexa as well; Mycroft, Siri, Ok Google, Bixby.

Those examples tell us that teams making these products do think about the impact of the name they choose if they're willing to accept something less "name like" will still work well, and maybe the Alexa team could have done better.

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thomasahle 1817 days ago
Siri is a common name in Norway and Sweden.

Much more common than Alexa.

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