I had similar experiences. I have toyed with the Mac speech recognition since the 90s but never found a compelling use. Siri is cool but not practical. The voice dialing in my car is great but limited. I’ve started using the microphone on the Apple TV 4 on occasion: “Skip ahead 100 seconds” to get past things like the GoT title sequence. Or to find something in the search.
In general though I have found most of the voice recognition use cases to be of limited, well, use. That is until I got the Dot. With my hands full I often forget to turn on the pantry light - which is rather dark and in a dark hallway. “Alexa turn on pantry.” In the kitchen - “Alexa set timer for 20 minutes.” “Alexa play radio KXPT.” “Alexa turn on gallery lights.” “Alexa turn off all lights.”
Amazon got a lot right with how Alexa works. I’m now hooked after 20 years of meh voice recognition.
Of course I have more than 50 smart bulbs and switches so there is definitely some incentive.
So youse guys who have these “always-on listening devices” in your homes… any fears of privacy loss?
Maybe my foil hat is showing a little bit here, but I always turn off voice recog, and cover forward-facing embedded cameras with a bit of tape.
"protocols of Samsung TVs include capturing voice commands with accompanying texts, which would allow the company to provide the user with Voice Recognition features. Doing so could lead to further evaluation and improvement of the features.
“Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice Recognition,” stated Samsung in the document."
Take it with a grain of salt. Echo doesn’t have a camera and I don’t think anybody wants to see me walking around naked anyway. I’m not reciting my account numbers to myself out loud so I’m not too worried about that.
I don’t believe the Echo sends anything to the mother ship until it hears the wake word. That doesn’t mean that some nefarious hacker couldn’t still use it to eavesdrop on you but there are plenty other ways somebody can use if they are targeting you for some reason. Not to mention that turning it off in software isn’t going to make a difference if somebody is hacking or the developer goes rogue.
Privacy is going to become much more of an issue over time. There will be lots of cases where products overstep and sometimes it won’t be obvious. One of my favorite examples is the smart TV that scanned your network and reported what it found to the manufacturer - and it wasn’t just looking for media servers.
If I had Alexa connected to my front door lock I might be worried about somebody yelling “Alexa, unlock front door” from outside but in all honesty a brick is going to faster and draw less attention. Like the fake email story about thieves using a computer and radio rig to steal door lock codes of cars. The story goes that the person discovered the thieves because every time they locked the door it immediately unlocked. Then they spied the thieves sitting in a nearby car with their gear. First off, if somebody was smart enough to go through all that they would be smart enough to not unlock the car until the person left. Second, a crack head isn’t going to spend thousands on computer gear when there is a nice big rock sitting nearby.
Privacy is something to consider but I decided Alexa wasn’t enough of a risk to worry about.
In our connected world, everything has the potential to be used in less than ideal ways. That phone in your pocket that responds to a wake word is no different. All your activities online are tracked for direct advertising and worse. Your GPS is tracking your location. The web camera in your laptop can be hacked. The only way to truly be safe from all that is to go off the grid.
I personally don’t find Amazons service any more scary than Apple or Google or Microsoft or…
The problem is when things are used in ways we don’t expect them to be used. This can either be by the manufacturer in the case of LG or by a hacker tacking control of a device. Most of today’s connected smart devices do not take security seriously and present a vulnerability open to attack. Most people wouldn’t think that a smart bulb might be a gateway to your computer.
Definitely not afraid. 1) They almost all need to be called to attention before interacting. 2) Everything’s encrypted. They can’t just “tap in.” and 3) I really wouldn’t care if “they’re” listening to me or watching me. I’m not very interesting and I really don’t have anything to hide from “them.”
Frankly, I’m not Schrodinger’s cat. My state will not change when I’m observed.
Yes, regarding privacy, our awareness of it lags.
An eye opening example was a lady walking into a fortune teller’s tent.
She and the fortune teller chatted for a minute or two and he started telling her about her dead brother and past events of her life where there was “no way” he could have known.
After her mind was totally blown a curtain drops and there are is a group of people pounding the keyboards…
Big data. Another example is Target being able to deduce a woman was pregnant before she had told her husband.
Shopping receipts.
Google now allows you to pick your phrase. I wanted ‘Computer…’ but had to settle for ’ listen up computer’.
The Android phone was regularly asking if I just said something.
Turns out the algorithm likes more syllables. Changed to one that has plenty, and is not heard normally.
’ Aldebaran’ works very well. I don’t even have to take it out of my pocket. Just pose my question and my pocket talks back.
I agree the accuracy is amazing.
Me? I type like a chicken eats. I have been waiting for this technology to mature for a long time! Just have to watch autocorrect like a hawk.
The “call to attention” or having to tell Alexa to “wake up” just reminds me that the device is always listening. I can’t tell you how many times the radio in my car activated the voice recognition on my GPS and messed with me. Or when I had a truck with OnStar, and suddenly I was not singing out loud to myself in the car, but was instead singing out loud to some lady in a call center in Michigan… “No, sorry, there is no emergency…”
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t use the things. I’m aware of how much of our lives are under scrutiny. I was shocked to find out that my town has just finally installed traffic cams on a few select intersections… at this point I just assume every traffic signal is watching at all times (with machine vision. obviously I don’t think they are all being monitored by a human at all times). Granted, I know a paraplegic woman who would absolutely benefit from a fully connected home.
My fears of a privacy loss are not specific, they are very general. I’m not doing anything in particular that I am afraid someone else would see. I just don’t like the idea, or the normalization of signing away privacy rights (in a real and legally binding sense) for a little convenience. Too little too late, I know.
I agree, that is why everybody needs to honestly evaluate their situation. It just isn’t given much thought by most people.
On a side note, the Echo Tap works just like the Echo and Echo Dot but you have to press a button for it to start listening. This removes one of the privacy concerns and as a result you lose the convenience. In that case I may as well just use Siri if I have to physically access the device.
Voice requires a certain kind of lifestyle and level of discipline. Had to turn off the mic on our Alexa till the 12-year-old stopped saying “Alexa, tell me a joke” at every opportunity. And when I’m out and about, I really don’t want everyone around me knowing what I’m asking Google…
Remember that just because it needs the wake word to interact, doesn’t mean its actually recording at any point prior to that. I felt the benefits outweigh the potential risks for now, and why there are so many around the house
Actually she was underage, not married and Target (obliquely) told her father. He found out when he complained about all the coupons and sales promotions being sent to his daughter for baby supplies.
I’m not reciting my account numbers to myself out loud so I’m not too worried about that.