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.
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
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.
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."
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.
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.
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)
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...
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"
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.
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
One time I was watching The Matrix. During the part where Morpheus explains everything and he said "What is the Matrix?" my phone piped up and started answering even tho there was nothing even close to sounding like "ok google" before that.
I've wondered if there's a way for political campaigns to take advantage of all the smart speakers by mixing in that old school approach of rolling through neighborhoods with loudspeakers on their cars.
Step 1. Make a campaign ad
Step 2. Upload the ad to Amazon music library
Step 3. Cruise around saying, "Alexa, play campaign ad for..." through the loud speaker
That’s not necessarily true. Detection of the trigger phrase is simple enough it can be done locally. If they are sending all your audio to their servers it’s not because they need to be.
It drives me crazy people insist they are sending a constant audio stream somewhere for nefarious purposes without any evidence. From a networking perspective this is knowable information.
No dude, they don't send shit to the cloud to process. It just stores like 5 seconds of voice locally and listens for the wake word. This is why you can only choose a few wake words and not pick anything arbitrary. I'm all for criticizing big tech, but don't lie about how it works.
Edit: Small correction, they of course send the the buffer and begin properly recording once it detects the wake word. Locally it can only detect Alexa and any other wake words it can respond to.
Yeah, right? It's technology not magic. Anyone can monitor the traffic from a device on a network and if it were sending a significant amount of data when not activated, every third party security researcher would know within minutes. It would be well publicized by respected security research organizations if they were constantly sending voice data.