Amazon Updates Echo, Echo Dot To Let You Address It As 'Computer' (theverge.com)

ewhac writes: "Computer, what is the time, please?" is now a spoken command that will actually work with Amazon's updated Alexa/Echo smart speaker. Previously, your options were "Alexa," "Echo," and "Amazon." Now you can also choose, "Computer." In practice, it's a bit clunkier than you might hope, depending on how often you speak the word "computer" on a day-to-day basis; and "computer" is harder for machine speech recognition to pick out than "Alexa," so it may not hear you as reliably. But for those who've been yearning for a Star Trek-like future, this small bit of silliness gets you one step closer.

Comments

Amazon spam

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing I have noticed is all the Amazon spam stories on here that mention "Alexa" and "Echo" and obliquely refer to how "successful" they are in terms of sales. The fact is that the Echo and Alexa are a market failure. All the stories they submit won't get around that fact.

Re:Amazon spam

[ShanghaiBill]

Except when you have friends with similar names (Alexa, Alexia, Alexis/Elexis, Alex), etc.

I just tried all of those. My Echo is not triggered by "Alexia", "Alexis", or "Alex". Only "Alexa".

Re:Amazon spam

[Anonymous Coward]

Do NOT switch to calling it "Computer". The name "Alexa" was specifically chosen as a trigger word because it is a sequence of phonemes that is unlikely to occur in a normal conversation, and even so, we have had an occasional false trigger. In a nerd household, "computer" will come up way, way more often.

I still don't understand why they can't just keep a rolling file of the last 10-15 seconds of conversation to determine whether I'm addressing the thing or referring to the thing. I mean, if it hears stuff like:

"what you do is say 'computer' and then..."
"...it should be on my computer's desktop, let me..."
"Hey where have you put my computer?"
"Hang on... Computer, make me a sandwich"

It should only react to the last one. I would expect that if we can recognise words, we can start to recognise rudimentary sentence structure to denote some sort of context: 'the computer', 'my computer' 'your computer' 'our computer' etc shouldn't trigger a response. A 'Computer' without context followed by an action/command? Well, that's a command, Do Stuff!

Does "Hello Stasi" work?

[Anonymous Coward]

When I was a kid, friends of my family who travelled to the Soviet Union during the cold war told me stories of visiting "refuseniks" (ie, Jewish families who were not permitted to get out of the country). I remember distinctly the story of how they used to write on those kids toys-- a writing pad with some kind of black wax on it and an opaque plastic sheet that would flip over the wax. You'd write a message on the plastic and it would stick to the plastic so you could read it, then you'd lift the plastic, the writing would "go away"...

This I was told was how families would talk in the 1970s because of microphones planted in their apartment, invading their privacy, etc. (Never mind the opsec of a wax impression of everything you wrote isn't that great...)

The point is, I'm blown away by the willingness to plop an omnidirectional microphone in the middle of your house. Even if you think you have "nothing to hide"-- maybe your guests do? Maybe you'll say something incredibly embarrassing or revealing or compromising your financial status... never reveal your passwords over the phone? Safe words? Sexual practices? Fetishes? Non-traditional relationships? Gossip? Family secrets? Controversial political views? Drug habits? Health issues? No secrets? Really?

I dunno-- every technology has its pluses and minuses which you gotta balance... yeah cell phones and your laptop have mics and cameras too... But given the fact that fucking Facebook quizzes are being used against you, is it really such a good idea to have an always-on pair of ears specifically designed to be listening?

(Also, don't leave your windows open, your computer speaker on, or your radios on, because I've got a software defined radio. And if you happen to have a text-to-voice browser going, "HELLO COMPUTER PLAY CLASSICAL MUSIC."

Re:Does "Hello Stasi" work?

[ShanghaiBill]

The point is, I'm blown away by the willingness to plop an omnidirectional microphone in the middle of your house.

Get a clue. Your computer and your phone also have microphones, and transmit WAY more traffic that could hide spying.

Amazon Echo does not have enough on board computing to do voice recognition of anything except the trigger word, it has minimal memory for buffering, and it transmits a very small amount of data when, and only when, the trigger word is used.

If you worry about the Echo, and you don't worry about your cellphone or laptop, then you're an idiot.

Re:Does "Hello Stasi" work?

[WaffleMonster]

The point is, I'm blown away by the willingness to plop an omnidirectional microphone in the middle of your house.

Get a clue. Your computer and your phone also have microphones, and transmit WAY more traffic that could hide spying.

I'm blown away by the dismissive response and display of technical ignorance.

Amazon Echo does not have enough on board computing to do voice recognition

It has 250MB of RAM, 4GB of flash and DM3725 arm processor. My blackberry 9000 did local voice recognition with half the RAM a quarter of the onboard flash and slower less capable processor. The original version of dragon recognized 25k words in less than 30MB of ram.

4GB of flash is enough to store a bit less than two months of continuous non-silence detected cell phone quality audio. With silence detection in most settings and a more complex/aggressive codec you could easily push a year.

it has minimal memory for buffering, and it transmits a very small amount of data when, and only when, the trigger word is used.

If you worry about the Echo, and you don't worry about your cellphone or laptop, then you're an idiot.

Every time someone raises a concern about x you will always find someone jumping on the...but what about y and z bandwagon. WTF do cellphones and laptops have to do with the topic at hand? Is it really necessary for someone raising a concern about x have to enumerate a list of everything else that can possibly raise similar concerns without being called an idiot?

Re:Why stop there?

[Wycliffe]

Let the user pick a personalized name like they would for any child or pet.

Since it's only listening for specific "wake words" and this processing must be done on the device itself, I imagine it's easier for them to code a few specific wake words into the firmware (and perhaps not even possible to do much more; I'm not sure we know much about its hardware)--everything else you speak afterwards (and, so they say, only this speech) is sent to AWS or whatnot where there's a lot more processing power, which I imagine that allowing the user to configure an arbitrary word would also take.

I believe the way it works is that it looks for a couple phonemes and if those phonemes match it wakes up, makes sure it is a match and starts processing. If they can change it between 3 or 4 phoneme groups, it would seem like they could fairly easily allow you to choose which phonemes you want it to match. My guess is they don't do this for 2 reasons. The first is that people would be stupid and try to pick something like 'bob' or 'anne' without realizing that it is not complex enough for safe triggers. The second which relates to the first as well is marketing. It is good marketing to have someone constantly saying 'amazon' or 'alexa' over and over. 'Computer' is cute but it's also likely an attempt to corral that keyword the same way microsoft took the word windows.