Alexa on Sonos is more likely to incorrectly play a song than any other Alexa device.

  • 24 February 2021
  • 4 replies
  • 30 views
M
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When I ask Alexa to “Play my notifications” on every other Alexa-enabled device in my house, it almost never fails. However when I ask Alexa to do that on my Sonos soundbar, about 50% of the time she plays a song. Has anyone else noticed this?

Alexa on the soundbar seems to be biased toward assuming you want to play music. Is this something that can be corrected?
I know that Alexa “learns” in a macro sense. Does she learn in a micro sense--for example that I don’t want to play music while others might. 

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4 replies

James L.
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Hey @MoTo77, thanks for reaching out.

 

That sounds odd. The way Alexa responds on a Sonos product shouldn’t be different to how she responds on an Echo device, i.e. she’s not biased towards playing music over other tasks when on a Sonos Speaker.

Go into the Alexa app and tap More → Activity → Voice History and check out the commands with strange responses. It might be best to filter the commands list down to the Sonos device you’re talking to for ease of reading. Do the commands look accurate compared to what you actually said? You can listen back to these utterances and also mark their accuracy underneath - this is how Alexa “learns” and can better tune the experience in future.

 

If you have any commands that consistently fail and give obscure responses please let us know. I tried the “play my notifications” command a few times, and she responded the same way, correctly, each time.

 
 
 
 
 
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M
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Thanks. My voice history is automatically deleted every day, but I’ll check this next time it happens.

M
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So after trying this, Alexa on Sonia is definitely more biased toward playing music than on any other device. After playing with this for two weeks, when I say, “Alexa play my notifications” Alexa on Sonos has mistaken that for “Alexa play my summer vacation” about 50% of the time. The other Alexa devices in my home (made by Amazon and Ecobee) never, ever get it wrong. The bias is clearly there. 
 

Any way to stop this? I’ve been reporting the errors through the Alexa app, but it hasn’t helped so far. 

 

 

 

 

M
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And one time I got this. Again, music. And only on Sonos.

 

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