My Quest to Fix a Crashing Roku App Provides a Warning About AI

I don’t think I’m alone when I confess that my streaming strategy is a mess. Worse, my precarious balance was wholly overturned a few weeks ago when the Netflix movie I was watching suddenly flickered, and, with brutal abruptness, quit entirely, dumping me into the anodyne pink abyss of the home screen of my Roku-powered smart TV. The Roku website offered a number of options to resolve system crashes, including updating the device’s operating system and reinstalling apps. So I began exploring the discussion groups in the Roku “customer community.” Roku is among many consumer tech companies that crowdsource problems like this, in hopes that people can share solutions without consuming valuable employee or engineering resources. Every so often someone seemingly representing Roku would drop in—like the voice of a first responder coming from the elevator control panel—and ask people to provide information about their TV and software status.