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posted by fyngyrz on Sunday April 01 2018, @06:11PM   Printer-friendly
from the IGNORE-ME dept.

Submitted via IRC for fyngyrz

There is patent activity afoot to cover Alexa and Google Assistant mining for more than activation words:

Amazon and Google, the leading sellers of such devices, say the assistants record and process audio only after users trigger them by pushing a button or uttering a phrase like "Hey, Alexa" or "O.K., Google." But each company has filed patent applications, many of them still under consideration, that outline an array of possibilities for how devices like these could monitor more of what users say and do. That information could then be used to identify a person's desires or interests, which could be mined for ads and product recommendations.

For many, this could change the landscape as to whether these devices are acceptable. It may also open the door wider for open-source, less invasive devices such as Mycroft.


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  • (Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Sunday April 01 2018, @07:36PM (5 children)

    by fyngyrz (6567) on Sunday April 01 2018, @07:36PM (#661209) Journal

    Come on, I was actually interested and you scared me away in 90 seconds! *disappointed*

    You scared yourself away. The device is open source. You want to know what it does, go look.

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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 01 2018, @07:49PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 01 2018, @07:49PM (#661214)

    ... then that's all I need to know.

  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 01 2018, @07:59PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 01 2018, @07:59PM (#661221)

    No.

    I also don't need a masters in biology to conclude that if it looks like a lion, I shouldn't pull it's tail.

    BTW: I did have another look at their site. The text-to-speech runs on their servers. Game over.

    • (Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Monday April 02 2018, @01:15AM

      by fyngyrz (6567) on Monday April 02 2018, @01:15AM (#661295) Journal

      The text-to-speech runs on their servers. Game over.

      FFS, it's not that simple. It's open source. You can change the STT engine yourself. Their community is well aware that this is desirable. [openstt.org] You want STT to not be on some BigCorp, Inc.'s servers? This is the way to go.

      Or, you know, you could just bitch endlessly and not contribute. I'm sure that'll move us forward.

    • (Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Monday April 02 2018, @01:21AM

      by fyngyrz (6567) on Monday April 02 2018, @01:21AM (#661298) Journal

      A handy table and some discussion of open STT engines. [svds.com]

      Remember: Mycroft is open source. "Lock-in" is not a given. People are working on this.