137 points

Alexa picked up you saying Alexa, then heard the Google’s compliment, which it mistook as having come from you. It wasn’t responding to Google, nor did Google activate it.

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134 points

You’re probably right in the first half, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if interactions between voice assistants are special cases that are accounted for by the programmers as a little bit of an Easter egg

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There are videos of people using their smart devices to get stuck in a loop of asking each other “what was that/can you repeat that?”

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12 points

Also a definite possibility with bad enough acoustics.

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31 points

They probably interact more through zeroconf/avahi/mdns than speakers and mics. I think both devices have some implementation of blue tooth low energy network mapping. They know about the other smart devices in your home.

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9 points

There was a Superbowl commercial for Alexa that sounded funny. Every time they said Alexa it sounded robotic. I guess they scrambled the voice just enough for the real units to not respond. Also, the first time they said it… It was subtle, but they said “Lexa” and not “Alexa.”

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2 points

South Park did an episode about this like ten years ago.

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I think it’s possible. At least in the past I could ask Google Assistant on my phone to “talk to Siri”.

Although I couldn’t test it as I don’t have an iPhone.

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-4 points

I like that you think this is me.

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29 points

I don’t, it was a “royal you”.

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-16 points

You must be fun at parties

/s

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12 points

I don’t really go to parties. Not my scene. Unless you mean ttrpg parties.

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-1 points

I was joking, isn’t that what Redditors always comment, when someone debunks something fun?

Wasn’t trying to infer anything, sorry if it offended you.

Not only you, the party scene hasn’t seen me dancing for a long time.

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68 points

WHY do (able) people let these things into their houses ??? i will never understand !!!

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41 points

It’s convenient to ask for the weather and set a timer by a voice command.

Tech companies are selling these devices at a loss because they think people are going to buy things by a voice command. But I think mostly people just use them for setting timers and other banal purposes.

They don’t actually spy on people, that would be extremely easy for anyone monitoring traffic from the device to know if it was happening. The reports about tech companies advertising things people talked about in front of a inactive home assistant device have an even more creepy explanation. These things happen because the tech companies know what you’re likely considering buying because they know your purchasing history of nearly everything you’ve ever bought in the past.

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32 points

Like that time 10 years ago that Target sent baby coupons to a man’s teenage daughter before the man knew she was pregnant: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/

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8 points

Yeah shit like that is why I don’t use customer loyalty cards. But I guess the credit card companies are probably selling my data anyway so maybe it doesn’t make a difference.

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8 points

I mean I consider the data collection spying.

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4 points

Omg lol I didn’t even know I could purchase stuff with the google home. I wouldn’t anyway because that’s silly to me but that’s funny if you’re right about it being their intent (I don’t doubt that you are). I got my google home for free or very cheap with my music streaming account.

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10 points

I don’t know about google home, but with Alexa they had advertisements with Alec Baldwin (before the incident) buying socks using Alexa. It probably made a lot of sense to someone like Jeff Bezos because money is nothing to him. So just saying “Alexa order me some socks” without even looking at a price makes a lot of sense to a billionaire.

But yeah… for everyone else it’s just a “remind me in half an hour to check on the roast” kind of device. I think it’s kinda funny they invested a lot of money into developing devices that are only slightly more convenient than setting an egg timer.

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39 points

To be fair, if you own a smartphone, you already carry one of these devices with you everywhere you go.

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11 points

Not if you disable all voice commands and use something like GrapheneOS (maybe even with stock android and ios when disabling all voice commands but I wouldn’t count on it)

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9 points

Graphene is available on a very limited set of devices so that’s a very, very small minority.

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-12 points

are you saying i secretly have amazon alexa installed on my grapheneos phone ? oh my!

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1 point

OK Google/Siri is built into every smartphone, genius. They have the same spying features as Alexa.

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9 points

I literally have a smart phone on my person 24/7. I don’t see how a speaker in my home is any worse. Plus they’re not constantly recording.

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6 points

they quite literally are recording constantly. how else can they detect the trigger phrase? they only difference is that they are supposed to delete these recordings after the phrase isnt heard. but who’s to say that one of these devices is really doing that? it could include these recordings in it’s next request to amazon’s headquarters.

regardless of what your phone does, having 2 recording devices is worse than 1. especially if they are owned by 2 separate companies. but if u disagree, why dont u livestream your computer screen 24/7, since microsoft is already recording that anyway…whats the difference?

every new internet-enabled microcomputer is another attack vector, and every less one is more peace of mind. there’s a reason most security-minded people dont live in the bush, every choice is a compromise, and i choose somewhere between being able living in society and having a recording device in every room.

also, you should consider using a free and open source mobile os if youre not already…

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14 points

they quite literally are recording constantly. how else can they detect the trigger phrase? they only difference is that they are supposed to delete these recordings after the phrase isnt heard.

Imagine you look at every frame of a video. Are you capable of detecting if one of the frames of video has a bird in it without saving anything? Of course you are. That’s how Alexa works. Stop falsely claiming it does anything else without proof. I’m all for criticizing Amazon but do it for legitimate things. We don’t need to resort to fear mongering and lies to take them down. There’s plenty of valid shit to accuse them of.

but who’s to say that one of these devices is really doing that? it could include these recordings in it’s next request to amazon’s headquarters.

Because people analyze the network traffic.

regardless of what your phone does, having 2 recording devices is worse than 1.

This is just goofy at this point. I’m not trying to convince you personally to put an Alexa in your house. I’m just saying that it’s a miniscule marginal amount of extra privacy loss at worst. It shouldn’t surprise you people are interested.

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10 points

they quite literally are recording constantly. how else can they detect the trigger phrase? they only difference is that they are supposed to delete these recordings after the phrase isnt heard.

I guess that depends on your definition of recording? An onboard microprocessor waiting for a trigger word is not storing or transmitting anything while waiting and that’s acceptable to me.

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3 points

Because it actually can help.

I have light switches that don’t turn on main lights when I walk into the house. Smart devices allow me to be physically safer in my house.

I can have my ac system not run full blast when I’m not home, I can save money.

I can see who is at my door and communicate with them without physically opening the door, therefore, I don’t have to draw my gun if stuff is sketchy.

Think about disabled people, they can easily control their space with just about any device.

I am NOT a defender of big tech, but there are use cases where it can improve your life immensely.

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3 points

For the first one, you should look into some z wave light switches; I have my house wired with them and then I setup triggers for things like “double tap this switch up to turn on the whole room” and “double tap this switch down to start a bedtime routine”

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1 point
  1. i dont know what u mean with this one.
  2. turn it off before you leave the house, it takes 2 seconds.
  3. use a peephole, a window, or even a camera which isnt connected to the internet.
  4. i specificed ‘able’ people for this reason. i know disabled people will find these devices useful.
  5. we clearly have different definitions of ‘immensely’…
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The fuck is going on with this comment section glorifying Alexa/google home like that. A smartphone being the same as a corporate listening device? Wtf. And you are the one getting downvoted by someone who has their account on a programming instance. Bizarre.

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46 points

Oh good, the AIs are falling in love. And since they’re all female presenting, it’s only a matter of time before the GOP goes after them for being gay. Isn’t living in hell the best.

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6 points

Ok hear me out, we let the GOP fight big tech over lesbian AI, whoever wins gives us one less big problem to deal with, we’d lose out on sapphic robot love but the upsides are huge

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3 points

Don’t worry, there’s still the fanfic forums for sapphic robot love

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44 points

Oh that was only seven years ago. A more innocent time.

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1 point

Nono, this is american time. 12/25/17 means 17th December 2025, so it’s technically from the future.

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2 points

So much edge.

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1 point
*

watch out that you don’t cut yourself 😘

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33 points

Ok, so I’m bothered by how much smart devices listen in as much as the next person. But if they said alexa in the question then she will be listening.

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