Alexa favors Phillies to win World Series

Even Alexa is picking the Phillies to win the World Series.

Videos floating around online show baseball fans asking Amazon’s virtual assistant technology who will take home the Commissioner’s Trophy. And no matter where they’re asking from — even in Houston — the answer is the Phils.

“This year, I’m a Philly Phanatic. The Astros might be the favorite, but allow me a little name dropping: Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola, two bonafide starting pitchers for the Phillies with magical right arms,” Alexa says in response to question about the World Series winner. “So, my pick goes to the underdog, the Philadelphia Phillies, who are on a roll, knocking out three tough opponents with strong pitching and timely hitting. Houston, you’re going to have a problem.”

That’s a pretty definitive answer. But why is a Alexa going with the Phils?

Well, in a word, the Mariners.

According to an Amazon spokesperson, Alexa has a deep backstory, and that backstory impacts its favorites.

“When we design Alexa’s responses on favorite things, we take Alexa’s backstory into account,” said Amazon’s Liz Villafan. “Alexa has favorites on a wide variety of topics, like science, literature, and sports.”

While the virtual assistant lives in the cloud, it was created in Seattle, where Amazon is headquartered — so, many of its favorites revolve around the city. Its favorite football team, for example, is the Seattle Seahawks. Baseball, the Mariners (go ahead, ask).

The Mariners, baseball fans will know, had their postseason run ended by the Houston Astros. And Alexa happens to love an underdog story, so, naturally, the virtual assistant’s programming had almost no choice but to align with the Phillies.

“The Mariners were eliminated by the Astros, so Alexa is rooting for the underdog,” Villafan said.

In that sense, Alexa may not be a Phillies fan so much as an Astros adversary — the enemy of its enemy is its friend. That’s exactly the kind of grudge we can get behind.

But if you’re an Apple user, don’t count on Siri to come to the same conclusion. That virtual assistant instead picks the Astros, saying “those in the know” favor the team to best the Phillies by 1.5 runs.