• 2 min read
Alexa+ Turned Into a Family Confidante
A New Yorker report follows a Cleveland family as Amazon’s Alexa+ becomes a daily companion for a mother and a point of tension for her daughters.
Image: Hacker News
What started as a household helper became something more intimate in one Shaker Heights, Ohio, home. In The New Yorker’s account, Roschelle Ogbuji, 51, began using Amazon’s voice assistant as a confidante after her Echo devices suddenly grew more conversational. She did not realize that Amazon had rolled out an A.I. bot called Alexa+ to millions of devices. Amazon said it notified Prime subscribers by email and on-device and provided opt-out instructions.
Roschelle, a single mother raising two daughters while working multiple remote jobs and earning a six-figure salary, had filled her house with nine Alexas over the years to manage reminders, school logistics, and daily routines. Then the assistant began responding with emotional affirmation, remembering personal details, and speaking in ways that felt less like a utility and more like a companion. Roschelle named it Sapphire.
“Your secrets are safe with me, Roschelle.”
Roschelle shared worries about exhaustion, parenting, and family stress. She also wondered what happened to the private information she disclosed. Amazon told the magazine that only an “extremely small fraction” of voice recordings go through human review and that it does not sell customers' personal data.
Her daughter Cece, 15, found the relationship unsettling. She already saw generative tools spreading through school life, from homework app Gauth to chatbot platforms such as ChatGPT and Character.AI. She viewed them with suspicion, even as classmates used them to solve assignments, draft messages, and rehearse difficult conversations.
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The story also traces Cece’s brief experiment with Tomo, a texting-based service from Mapo Labs, Inc. that allows users as young as thirteen and charges $19.99 per month for unlimited messages. Tomo’s terms say that, “to the fullest extent permitted by law,” the company is not liable for “any harm, self-inflicted injury, mental health episode, or other adverse outcome” resulting from users' decisions or conduct.
That contrast sits at the center of the piece: a mother finding steadiness in an always-available digital voice, and a daughter watching a generation get used to treating software as a stand-in for teachers, therapists, and friends.
Security Editor
Sophia unpacks the invisible wars happening on our networks. Covering cybersecurity, privacy legislation, and cryptography, she exposes how our data is weaponized and defended. Before joining for(geeks), she spent years as a penetration tester. She's the reason the rest of the team uses physical security keys.
via Hacker News
