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Burger King Runs Ad Triggering Google Home Devices; Google Shuts It Down (theverge.com)
Burger King unveiled a new advertisement earlier today designed to trigger users' Google Home devices. The ad specifically used the Google Home trigger phrase "Okay, Google" to ask "What is the Whopper burger?," thus triggering the Google Assistant to read off the top result from Wikipedia. But less than three hours after Burger King launched the ad, Google disabled the functionality. The Verge reports: As of 2:45PM ET, Google Home will no longer respond when prompted by the specific Burger King commercial that asks "What is the Whopper burger?" It does, however, still respond with the top result from Wikipedia when someone else (i.e., a real user) other than the advertisement asks the same question. Google has likely registered the sound clip from the ad to disable unwanted Home triggers, as it does with its own Google Home commercials.
I wanted to hear more about this "Whopper" burger! What are you trying to hide Google???
I feel like that violates some sort of copyright law. I don't know which one, but I am sure there is one.
Isn't this basically a blatant violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse act? What if a small timer had done this and not a mega corporation?
I'm glad google shut this down, but I have to admit I'm rather impressed with Burger King on this one. Nicely played.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
ONLY apps can app apps, and Apper King was simply trying to app apps while apping other apps! LUDDITE Google is too stupid to figure out how to app the app, so they used LUDDITE hackers to shut it down!
Apps!
The company that made the CueCat wanted to be able to do just this eventually. When I worked at Radio Shack in the early 00's we gave these stupid things away. Information coming down the pipeline said they eventually intended to make a device that connected to the PC and would respond to audio cues in advertisement on TV and open a browser to the product page. At the time it sounded retarded, like, "who the fuck would want such a thing?" Laugh's on me I guess, everyone wants an Echo or Home now.
... "Malicious attackers in Burger King's advertising department use vulnerability in Google home to make it do stuff its owner didn't request".
It's a bit rich to call it an ad and chuckle about.
It's a lot scary that it's possible for a remote attacker to ask these devices en masse to do something with nothing more than a broadcast ad. For now it was reading a wikipedia page. What happens when scumvertisers and other malicious adversaries figure out a way to make it spend money without your consent? Or to report to them that you have heard the ad, or worse.
I drink to make other people interesting!
Obligatory etc.
Relevant xkcd
Can we crowdfund some radio advertising and broadcast a few messages to GHomes of our choosing? Any suggestions?
1. Record someone's voice without permission.
2. Build custom TTS.
3. Use your victim's voice to give orders to other IoT devices.
4. ???
5. Profit!
--- Sueños del Sur - a webcomic about four young siblings
For me. Quick and on the money. I have tested it to see if it will open when asleep - Nope.
This AD is a cheap trick, yet shows the risk of using Google home or any other device of it's nature.
Whopper is defined as "a gross or blatant lie."
Why the google doodad would talk about hamburgers when asked to define a straightforward word in relatively common use is beyond my understanding. Had they provided a correct answer (and not a hamburger advertisement) this would not have been an issue.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
Of why it's an awful idea to force all devices to listen out for the same fucking activation line. Some with "always on listening".
Will google now wake-up and let us train the assistant to trigger at whatever we want? -later matching it only to our voice so it's less likely to activate even if someone knows what we say to activate it.
I like the phrase; *white noise breathing* "Luke, this is your father." -let's use that.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
On the scale of humanity there's normal people, sociopaths, psychopaths, then a large gap, then finally marketeers.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Is wtf are we issuing the same commands to wake up our AI?
This is just the tip of the iceberg.
Of course it is brand awareness driving profits, right?
I personally want to wake up my AI with commands I want.
Google should have cheated on the sort algorithm and put in their own add in top place: "A slab of muscle tissue from an immature castrated bull between two lumps of overheated grains stripped of their nutritional components, accompanied by...."
Had to amend my search to "whopper BBC".
Burger King's ad campaigns have been the laughing stock of the advertising world forever. I was studying marketing back in the 80s, in college, and had a subscription to Advertising Age (the leading trade publication of the industry). At that time, Burger King's campaign revolved around the phrase, "Burger King. Sometimes you just gotta break the rules." It was considered so ridiculous that Advertising Age held a contest to see if anyone could come up with anything even more insane. Finalists in the top-5 included "Long John Silver's, for the seafood lover that is Allah"...and, of course because someone submitted it, "Burger King. Sometimes you just gotta break the rules." This was about three decades ago.
Then there was their whole "chicken fries" campaign, back in the...was that the 90s? I have no idea what the fuck that was all about, though the "band" that was prominently featured there openly admitted that they did the ads because they realized they weren't going to make it as real musicians so they may as well sell out. And this admission wasn't on some interview or a website off to the side...it was featured front-and-center on the official website that Burger King stood up for the ad campaign.
So, at least Burger King is keeping up with the times, finding new and innovative ways to blow dead goats with their ad campaigns.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
I didn't see the ad, and I don't have Google Home. I probably would have thought it was funny, chuckled, then thought about the ramifications and thought "Holy Shit". This incident was funny, but the idea of a voice on TV taking over my (hypothetical) smart home is scary.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
IF THIS(GoogleAssistant("What is the Whopper burger"); say("A flaming piece of feces.")
THEN(trigger some dummy action like sending a notification)
Problem solved.
> Google has likely registered the sound clip from the ad to disable unwanted Home triggers, as it does with its own Google Home commercials. This leaves me wondering if the actors from these commercials are unable to use the service. "OK, Google. *ahem* OK, Google. HEY! OK, GOOGLE! Dammit, it's really me this time!"
You're probably correct, but they'd have huge numbers of both false positives and false negatives, and they'd use whopping amounts of CPU time and RAM. Not a good answer.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
or even "hamburger royale".
I think you mean "Royale with cheese".
WTB [sig], PST!!!
"Waaaah, I pay for television to deliver me advertising and then it communicated with the device I bought for spying and advertising and the device advertised to me!"
The amount of sympathy I have for these brainiacs could be measured with electron scanning microscope.
Google missed an opportunity here. They should have programmed it to respond with something like "something almost but not completely unlike a hamburger" or gone with kickback money from McD's and said something like "a pale imitation of McDonald's quarter pounder" or even "hamburger royale".
Google was just quoting Wikipedia and it was swiftly edited:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/ind...
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Maybe it would freak some people out, but maybe more people wished they had a Google assistant running so they could get in on the fun. My reaction was more towards the latter, though I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea of talking to machines. Well, with might be more accurate. I prefer my conversations with computers to be one sided and profanity laden - as in, "Come on you little f-er just f-ing boot, come on come on OH YOU LITTLE S-T! NONONONO! F-! C-SUCKER!".
Bravo! I thought the same thing. Google could have made it the biggest usurped ad in history by redirecting the answer to a competitor's ad.
It would have been more fun if they made the system respond with the nutrition facts instead of the Wikipedia info. That would teach them a lesson about taking that gamble in the future.