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Burger King Ad Hijacks Google Assistant, Google Blocks It Specifically in Response

posted by Fnord666 on Friday April 14 2017, @12:11AM   Printer-friendly
from the poking-the-bear dept.

takyon writes:

In response to a commercial that hijacks Google Assistant (aka the Google Home device), Google has updated their systems to prevent that single recording from triggering the device:

Burger King made waves today after it released a TV ad that purposely triggered the Google Assistant. The ad ends with a person saying "OK Google, what is the Whopper burger?"'—a statement designed to trigger any Google Assistant devices like Android phones and Google Home to read aloud a description of the hamburger's ingredients. Google apparently wasn't happy with a third-party hijacking its voice command system to advertise fast food, and has issued a server-side update to specifically disable Burger King's recording.

Very related: News Anchor Sets Off Alexa Devices Around San Diego Ordering Unwanted Dollhouses

Neither Amazon's Alexa nor Google Assistant can identify who is speaking to it based on a profile. This functionality could be added in the future with a hardware or cloud update.

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  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 14 2017, @08:18AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 14 2017, @08:18AM (#493871)

    "As of late I have been informed that IoT and network services is a wonder of diligent and security aware framework ;)"

    I would just like to reiterate that the "S" in IoT stands for "Security".

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 14 2017, @11:15AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 14 2017, @11:15AM (#493906)

    It's a funny quip but we don't reiterate here. Let me say that again...