An android child struggles to control his emotions. Robots threaten to take away human jobs. And a voice-activated device ponders its own existence.
These dark themes were explored by this year¡¯s Super Bowl commercials, with brands such as TurboTax, Olay and Sprint capitalizing on fears that technology is encroaching on our lives. The unspoken subject of many of the ads: Amazon.com Inc.¡¯s Alexa, an increasingly ubiquitous digital assistant sold by one of the world¡¯s most powerful companies.
Amazon had its own commercial, where it poked fun at Alexa. The ad featured rejected ideas for the technology ¡ª including a microwave, dog collar and hot tub ¡ª and even depicted a massive power outage triggered by Alexa.
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