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posted by martyb on Sunday July 05 2020, @03:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the nature'll-anguish-wreck-ignition dept.

Uncovered: 1,000 phrases that incorrectly trigger Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant:

As Alexa, Google Home, Siri, and other voice assistants have become fixtures in millions of homes, privacy advocates have grown concerned that their near-constant listening to nearby conversations could pose more risk than benefit to users. New research suggests the privacy threat may be greater than previously thought.

The findings demonstrate how common it is for dialog in TV shows and other sources to produce false triggers that cause the devices to turn on, sometimes sending nearby sounds to Amazon, Apple, Google, or other manufacturers. In all, researchers uncovered more than 1,000 word sequences—including those from Game of Thrones, Modern Family, House of Cards, and news broadcasts—that incorrectly trigger the devices.

“The devices are intentionally programmed in a somewhat forgiving manner, because they are supposed to be able to understand their humans,” one of the researchers, Dorothea Kolossa, said. “Therefore, they are more likely to start up once too often rather than not at all.”

[...] Examples of words or word sequences that provide false triggers include

  • Alexa: “unacceptable,” “election,” and “a letter”
  • Google Home: “OK, cool,” and “Okay, who is reading”
  • Siri: “a city” and “hey jerry”
  • Microsoft Cortana: “Montana”

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  • (Score: 1) by Zinnia Zirconium on Sunday July 05 2020, @03:50AM (2 children)

    by Zinnia Zirconium (11163) on Sunday July 05 2020, @03:50AM (#1016373) Homepage Journal

    I wish the microphone could be muted by voice command.

    Seriously just mute the fukken thing.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 05 2020, @04:37AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 05 2020, @04:37AM (#1016388)

    Another fix is to unplug the thing, and let it gather dust on a shelf.

    I know that it will supposedly improve over time given more work on Amazon, Google, etc.'s end, but it never seemed that useful to me when I tried it out. Just a gimmick, or a music player.

    If it can understand a crackhead or an extremely distracted person musing out loud without bothering to form hyperspecific verbal commands, then the technology will be useful. Until then, I don't care.

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 05 2020, @04:49AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 05 2020, @04:49AM (#1016393)

    Unacceptable! Order two tons of creamed corn! [xkcd.com]