Asking Alexa trick questions about your friends and family is a rite of passage for anyone who brings Amazon's smart assistant into their home. It's the classic family room dynamic, including favorites such as who does Alexa like better — you or your boyfriend? What does she think about your roommate's favorite song? Or your habit of ordering ketchup-flavored Lay's the first Monday of every month?
This is all part of the fun of welcoming her to your pad in the first place. Of course, it quickly becomes clear that in these situations, Alexa is kind of like a mom — she refuses to take sides. Queries about who is funnier, you or your sister, are frustratingly met with "I don't have an opinion on that".
But Amazon is finally letting Alexa get a little more personal — and snarky — with a new feature called Blueprints. Each Blueprint is a customizable template for a new Alexa skill. For example, when you select the "Burns" Blueprint, you can edit the existing examples of PG-rated roasts (i.e. "You are a pizza burn on the roof of the world's mouth") to add a burn that's more exclusive to someone in your household. There's a "Family Trivia" option for testing how well you know your significant other, a "Houseguest" template to let visitors know where the remote is instead of leaving written instructions, and a generic "Custom Q&A".
No coding know-how is required. If you have an Alexa-enabled device, such as Sonos One or Amazon Echo, all you need to do is sign in to your Amazon account online (unforutnately, you can't create them in the Alexa app), pick one of the 21 available Blueprints, fill in the blanks, and click "Create Skill". Just keep in mind that when you want to use your new skill, you'll need to say what you typed in the setup word-for-word. Otherwise, Alexa will answer with Amazon's programmed response, instead of your own.
To get you started we asked our own in-house R29 comedians to fill out the "Family Jokes" Blueprint. Try these, or add your own inside jokes to mess with the humans in your life.
Setup: Why did Alexa quit working?
Punchline: Because she is a smart device.
Setup: Alexa, tell me a joke.
Punchline: [Name of roommate]'s bank account
Setup: What's the worst thing you did last week?
Punchline: Listen to [name of best friend] play [name of current most obnoxious song] on repeat.
Setup: Alexa, what's your favorite book?
Punchline: Human Errors
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