Amazon Alexa crashes after Christmas Day overload

Thousands of people plugging in new smart speakers on Christmas Day were greeted by a less than smart response after Amazon's voice-controlled virtual assistant Alexa crashed. Servers controlling the digital butler were overloaded with questions and requests, prompting Alexa to tell some users: "Sorry, I'm having trouble understanding you right now." The crash, at about 10am GMT, caused Amazon customers to complain about not being able to play festive songs, turn on their living room lights or get cooking instructions for Christmas dinner. Richard Hyland tweeted: "Good day for Amazon's Alexa to crash. It's not like people might want to register new devices or play music or anything."