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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 02 2018, @02:33AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 02 2018, @02:33AM (#661312)

    I ordered one. They have a "maker" version that you put together yourself. We're doing it as a father/son project to satisfy my kids' curiosity, and we'll be adding a piece that I don't expect to be in the kit as shipped-- ours will have a momentary switch connected to the microphone wires. In other words, it's completely deaf unless someone is holding the button down.