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Ask Alexa to open Borat Assistant for the best potato news

The new addition to Amazon's personal assistant is "very nice."

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
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Gael Cooper
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Borat is now in control of Alexa.

 Amazon Prime Video

You probably don't want to take advice from Borat, of all people. But now the Sacha Baron Cohen character has moved into Amazon's Alexa , and with your permission, will hand out terrible jokes, stories and bizarre news updates. Hurry up and try it though. As Alexa's new Borat Assistant will tell you, he has to go "make toilet." (Plus, the Borat Assistant is available for a limited time only.)

Just instruct your device to try the program by saying, "Alexa, open Borat Assistant," and acknowledge that you might hear some adult jokes or language. Then you can tell Borat to share the news, sing a song or tell a joke.

Eventually, Alexa will go back to regular virtual assistant duties, which is probably for the best, since there's only so much potato and bear news a person can take. And Borat's musical medley is a bit like if your uncle had too much schnapps at Thanksgiving and decided to jump, jump to the rhythm in Grandma's rec room. Seriously, it's like he'll never stop. Don't even get me started on his delivery of fake news -- with one foxy exception.

Why is Amazon letting the mankini-wearing fictional celeb into its device? It's a movie promotion, but kind of a funny one. The second Borat film, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, is now available on Amazon Prime Video.