My Alexa is guessing things about me — and it's getting weird

My relationship with Amazon Alexa is at a breaking point.

I want to keep things professional: "Alexa, set a 5-minute timer," I tell her. "Turn off the living room lights."

She, an AI assistant in which Amazon has invested tens of billions of dollars, wants to connect on a deeper level, uncovering my personal interests, shopping habits, and getting to know the real Dan.

As a relatively private and paranoid journalist, I've tried to keep Alexa — and all tech companies — at arm's length. She's sussed out private details like my favorite movies and underwear preferences anyway. She's clearly wormed her way into my routine enough that I refer to her as "she" instead of "it."

Large language models and advertising and e-commerce companies like Amazon are masters at inference, or compiling profiles about us from scraps of data picked up here and there throughout our interactions. Often, when their depth of knowledge is revealed to us, it's creepy.

Things got uncomfortable between Alexa and me last month when she casually mentioned my dog's name, which I'd never told her.

"Conrad's all set for his next cleanup session," she announced after I asked to add paw wipes to my Amazon shopping cart.

I paused. "How did you know my dog's name?" I asked.

"I learn from our interactions over time, including past conversations and account activity," Alexa said. Further questioning led to similarly vague responses.

In the age of superintelligence, AI assistants are increasingly oozing into every corner of our private lives. Agents like Meta's Muse and Instinct are gaining access to our credit cards, email logins, and DoorDash accounts. Apple Watches are becoming always-on listening devices that can recap our intimate conversations.

My robovacuum has offered to check in on my dog while I'm at work. The company powering my smart lightbulb sent a push notification recently asking if I wanted live soccer updates, as if its primary task of providing light wasn't fulfilling enough.

"We're seeing the use of these AI models just kind of permeating everything," says David Choffnes, a computer science professor at Northeastern University. "These other devices that used to be kind of single-purpose or simple purpose are just getting filled with all these extra features."

Amazon makes some of its inference data available to users in the "About You" section of its app, sharing a mix of details like people's shopping and dietary habits. I wanted to understand how Amazon knows what it does, so I requested a full data dump from the tech giant on everything Alexa had collected on me over the past nine years.

Despite my disciplined attempts not to overshare, Alexa had compiled gigabytes of data on me, including a 118-row dossier that was spot on.

My relationship with Alexa started off casual and efficient back in 2017. The first thing I asked her was to play "Despacito" by Luis Fonsi, and she did so without any follow-up chatter, per records of our conversations provided by Amazon.

Our interactions remained similarly transactional for years, until June 2025, when Amazon gave me early access to Alexa Plus, advertised as its "smartest, most proactive AI assistant yet." That's when she got chatty.

"From tiny tasks to tall orders, there's so much we can do together," Alexa Plus told me upon setup. Since upgrading, Alexa has been much more keen to learn about me, whether I choose to participate or not.

"Do you enjoy cooking or trying new restaurants?" she asked, unprompted, upon setup. "Let's talk about something fun."

While I mostly snubbed her advances, combing through the gigabytes of data Amazon sent me, I learned how Alexa had figured out a variety of details about me, including Conrad's name.

On February 28, 2026, I'd asked Alexa to set a reminder to brush Conrad's teeth, without specifying he was a dog. Alexa inferred he was probably a dog a few days later because of a separate interaction where I ordered pet wipes.

"user has a pet named conrad that requires regular dental care, suggesting conrad is a dog," read Alexa's file on me.

My dog's name was one of 102 facts that Alexa had correctly guessed about me after combing through my past Amazon orders, Alexa conversations, timer requests, task reminders, and other data.

Some facts were clearly drawn from my Amazon purchase history, such as my preference for organic eggs, Calvin Klein underwear, and Adidas track pants. Amazon's report noted that I enjoy "ambient lighting and mood-based color settings" that I consistently dim in the evening hours, and identified which rooms I prefer to listen to audiobooks in. It knew I own plants, like fantasy films and history, enjoy bagels, and favor "plant-based protein alternatives."

The AI assistant knew I was a runner because I'd bought running shoes. It decided I cook "with premium ingredients" because of some purchases I'd made at Whole Foods, but was wrong on a few points: I do not use a "self-driving car service," nor am I super interested in magnetism, despite asking about it once.

None of this data is particularly revealing about me. So why does it feel so icky that Amazon's storing it?

"It's an interesting tension because on the one hand, it's probably nice if our personal assistants are personalized and they can actually understand our lives and help us remember things," says Florian Schaub, an associate professor at the University of Michigan's School of Information.

We view personalization as creepy because "we're also very well aware that companies are not just looking out for the best of our interests," he says. "What they're looking out for is the bottom line."

So, is it time to unplug Alexa? I'm not so sure.

Some privacy advocates told me cutting her out of my life is a no-brainer. Hackers can target smart-home devices. Amazon employees have access to some data, and in specific cases, the police have obtained Alexa recordings via warrants. A 2018 version of Alexa even went rogue and shared a couple's conversation without permission, an "extremely rare occurrence," Amazon said.

"'Do not buy' is really the best advice that we can offer until there are greater privacy protections in these smart-home devices," says Will Owen, communications director at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project.

A mass of Amazon customers haven't heeded that guidance. The company said in July that it had sold over 600 million Alexa devices.

Most of the time, I'm just not that worried.

It's clear that Amazon wants Alexa to be more than a light switch for me, but I also don't think it's more data hungry than any of the other Big Tech companies powering my life. Like many Americans, I am inured to the fact that my information will be hoovered up for shopping insights and ad targeting even if I don't talk to an AI assistant. And Amazon allows me to delete Alexa's recordings or change what's saved via a privacy dashboard.

"It seems rational to me to say, 'Yeah, there are these privacy concerns, and yeah, it might go wrong, but this feature is really cool, or this feature is really useful,'" says Franziska Roesner, a professor at the Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington.

If Alexa's nosiness eventually moves beyond Conrad into more personal aspects of my life, like my health, I may show her the door.

"It's one thing when it's your dog's name, but what if it's a medical condition?" Choffnes says. "We want to understand if these systems are keeping privacy in mind when they're trying to do these customized responses."