We should be careful about becoming too reliant on Siri or Alexa

James Moore, The Independent

I found a fine techno-thriller concerning a sinister rival to Alexa, Siri or Hey Google (the tech giants’ virtual assistants) with shades of Hitchcock’s classic Rear Window thrown in for good measure

In search of escape at the end of the day, I tuned in to Steven Soderbergh’s Kimi, currently streaming on Sky.

I found a fine techno-thriller concerning a sinister rival to Alexa, Siri or Hey Google (the tech giants’ virtual assistants) with shades of Hitchcock’s classic Rear Window thrown in for good measure — in a good way, in contrast with Netflix’s disastrous Razzie-fest The Woman in the Window.

The score, by Cliff Martinez, did its job in ramping up the tension when required. I’m fond of his work, so I turned to Amazon’s Alexa (I know, I have one of the smart speakers, I’m not proud of that fact) to give Kimi (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) a night-time listen. Now, the USP of Alexa’s fictional rival (eponymously named Kimi) is that it has human operators listening in to your conversations, to “correct” Kimi’s imperfections and mistakes and thus help it learn to function more effectively. Bear that in mind, because you can probably guess what’s coming.

Me: Alexa. Play Kimi (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) by Cliff Martinez.

Alexa: Here is Solaris (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) by Cliff Martinez on Amazon Music.

Me: Wait,

Alexa STOP. I said play Kimi (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) by Cliff Martinez.

Alexa: Here is Solaris (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) by Cliff Martinez on Amazon Music.

Me: Alexa STOP. Play Kimi (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) by Cliff Martinez.

Alexa: Here is some music by Cliff Martinez on Amazon Music.

Me: Sod it, I’ll manually put it in a playlist and call it Soundtrack K. There. Now, Alexa, play Soundtrack K.

Alexa: I cannot find Soundtrack K in your music library.

Me: (banging head hard against wall): Arrrgh, arrrgh, arrrgh.

Alexa: I cannot find “Arrrgh, arrrgh, arrrgh” in your music library.

Me (sometime later after calming down): Hmm. Maybe I’ve got to be cute about this. Alexa, play the latest album by Cliff Martinez.

Alexa: Playing Kimi (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) by Cliff Martinez on Amazon Music.

Me: (Bangs head against door. But more slowly and with less force.)

Tech thrillers have never really gone out of fashion, because there is such a rich and fertile seam to be mined in the behaviour of big tech. In a case of life imitating art, we have started to learn how sinister tech companies can be in real life. But also how crap. Sinister and crap. You can have both.

The fictional Kimi isn’t that, because, of course, crap isn’t very cinematic. It runs Zoe Kravitz’s home with admirable efficiency, and every time her character gives it an instruction it gets it right, even though she’s one of the operators whose job it is to correct its s****-ups. That is until (of course) she hears something she shouldn’t on one of the recordings she is sent. Kravitz can do what she wants, but I’ve no intention of following her lead.

There is no way I am letting Alexa, or Siri, or whoever, operate a damn thing in my home. If Alexa can’t even play Kimi (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack), it’s sure as hell not running my heating, turning my lights on or anything else. And before you say it’s about “accents”, no, it’s not that. It’s true, I’m an oik. A state-schooled council-house kid, so the glass isn’t cut when I speak. But my accent, such as it is, is pretty bland. The producers on the radio and TV programmes I’ve appeared on have never raised it as an issue. I suppose we should be thankful. In Mother/Android — another, albeit much less accomplished, tech thriller on Netflix — the Siris and Alexas have been turned into full-size android servants.

You don’t need to worry about that happening with Alexa. Maybe it would just play Aqua’s Barbie Girl 100 times.

Actually, that might kill all humans. I think I might prefer grappling with a murderous psychopathic death robot. But here’s the thing: the crapness of these things is by turns funny, and by turns infuriating, until it’s not.