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Amazon Leak Exposes Echo AI Device With Touch Display and FireOS (hothardware.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the leaky-faucet dept.

MojoKid writes: Today, an image of what could be a touch-screen Amazon Echo device has emerged. Like the earlier Echo Look leak, the image of the device was found on Amazon's servers, just waiting to be discovered. The new Echo device is reportedly codenamed "Knight" and will be revealed later this month. It will also take its place as the flagship of the Echo family, likely surpassing the $179.99 MSRP of the original Alexa-powered AI speaker. It should be noted that the image leak lines up with previous reports we've seen regarding a so-called flagship Echo device. Late last year, we learned that the device would feature a 7-inch touch screen, and that it would have integrated speakers that are superior to those in the original Echo. There's even a built-in camera at the top of the device, which could be useful for video conferencing. It was also mentioned that the Echo device will run Amazon's FireOS and respond to verbal commands and spoken questions, just like current Alexa devices. Amazon is also reportedly testing a feature that allows users to pin items such as photos on their speaker's screen akin to physically placing items on a "refrigerator door."

36 comments

  1. So... It's a New Fire Tablet? by mentil · · Score: 3, Insightful

    7" touch screen? Camera and better speaker than an Echo? Runs Fire OS? Likely $199+? Almost certainly runs ARM. Tell me again how this is different from a Fire tablet.

    --
    Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
    1. Re:So... It's a New Fire Tablet? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Included wall mounting? Justifies a $200 markup

    2. Re: So... It's a New Fire Tablet? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This one is slashvertised!

    3. Re: So... It's a New Fire Tablet? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So fucking ugly! My dad has these stupid devices around his "automated" house from like 15 years ago. What geniuses taking us back in time and pretending it's new. Fuck you tech companies.

    4. Re:So... It's a New Fire Tablet? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Damnit. You remind me of various senior managers I talked to in Nokia around the launch of the iPhone.

      People do not buy products according to bill of materials, how it's made, or what it costs. They buy it according to percieved value. Percieved value can include things like: "does this make me look sexy", "can I solve a life problem with this", "does this come from a company I trust". In this context, the fire tablet is a failure because it doesn't do anything that people noticed that raises it above a standard Android tablet. The echo seems to have found another solution space. It's a hands free radio which solves the problem that you don't want to get up to change the music when working. It looks simple and reasonably cool. It has a high percieved value for some people.

      The reason that Google and Apple are coming to dominate consumer operating systems is because what people want is something that sits there and just works when they need it. Something Android, iOS CromeOS and even OS/X are percieved to have achieved. In the meantime their competitors are percieved to require you to mess around with package management, installing anti-virus, kernel recompilation and hacking the registry. I believe that Linux Mint is objectively better than those. I am percieved to be wrong and that's all that matters for now. If you are writing a piece of commercial software to deliver to consumers there are only really two platforms that matter. iOS and Android. Get success there and then you can consider desktop clients later do it the other way round and you will be too late. This is despite the fact that essentially, underneath it all, the operating systems are all doing the same job of hardware abstraction and user interface.

      If echo can continue to be perceived as a hands free music supply, that just happens to have a screen then the fact it shares components with and actually works the same way as a tablet underneath will be irrelevant. The fact that they can make a more valuable product from less demanding components is to their benefit. In the same way as the iPhone, objectively worse, was actually better.

    5. Re:So... It's a New Fire Tablet? by kamapuaa · · Score: 1

      Actually, it runs off of an Intel processor (an Intel Atom x5-Z8350).

      And 7" Fire tablets are pretty cut-rate. This is surely built to a higher quality. For the most obvious thing, the speakers are obviously going to be much better.

      --
      Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
  2. Hooray by Cornwallis · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Making Orwell's Telescreen more cuddly...

  3. Fuck privacy. by geekmux · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "There's even a built-in camera at the top of the device, which could be useful for video conferencing."

    So, the always-listening device sitting inside people's homes is now outfitted with an always-watching feature. Color me surprised that the Alexa generation would welcome this shit too.

    Since most of us do video conferencing from a smartphone or tablet which is far more portable, I'm failing to understand why we need another device to do this. I suppose next years model will come with a SIM card too; you know, so everyone can replace that cheap landline they used to have with the e-hipster kitsch flavor of the month.

    1. Re:Fuck privacy. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      u sound old

    2. Re:Fuck privacy. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "There's even a built-in camera at the top of the device, which could be useful for video conferencing."

      So, the always-listening device sitting inside people's homes is now outfitted with an always-watching feature. Color me surprised that the Alexa generation would welcome this shit too.

      Since most of us do video conferencing from a smartphone or tablet which is far more portable, I'm failing to understand why we need another device to do this.

      Teleconferencing on a cell phone, in my opinion, is the second to bottom option: doing it from a laptop. Even a decent desk phone is much nicer for telecons, and a headset is best (for those who have to listen to you). I think more and better equipment would be welcome. What is not welcome is our constant loss of privacy.

      I've, literally, been beating this drum for years, long before the snowden leaks. I'm glad to see public option shifting, but now we're fighting some serious momentum. The powers that be (powerful people in both private and public sectors love this spying shit) see that we're hooked on the technology and there is essentially no poison pill we won't swallow to get it, including almost total loss of private dignity. Even if we all started pushing back today, I think it's too late: the average person, even if they now see this shit as creepy, is too hooked on the technology to go backwards. If we can't boycott, we have no voice. But, like you, I certainly won't be buying anything that is always listening, let alone recording. The previous Xbox launch (if you don't remember, it had mandatory, always-on kinect initially), for example, left a very strong aversion to any microsoft hardware. I just don't think a few of us boycotting can change much (other than the privacy I enjoy in my own home).

    3. Re:Fuck privacy. by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 2

      I fail to see why you need to wonder why this thing is, when your subject line covers it in two words. It's more surveillance in your home. YOU are the product, and Amazon, like so many other companies these days, considers you not only the product, but a useful idiot, because people are lining up to pay for the surveillance device they'll have operating in their homes 24/7/365, that now will not only listen, but watch everything in it's field of view. Years ago I used to taunt people who saw no problem with the burgeoning number of cameras out in public places, asking them if they'd like having cameras that strangers would be watching inside their homes; I was scoffed at for posing wild unrealistic scenarios that would never happen in the real world. Yet here were are, with cameras and microphones being installed in people's homes in devices purpose-designed to watch and listen continually. You're right to not want this, you're right to scoff at those who do, and you're right to discourage people from having such things in their homes; keep it up, we might yet uproot this evil trend.

    4. Re:Fuck privacy. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't know. For companies like Google and Facebook, where so much is free, and the companies get their money primarily from advertisers, you indeed ARE the product. But at companies like Amazon and Apple, which get their money primarily from selling stuff to you, you are the customer.

      In the end, no company wants to piss off its revenue stream. Companies which sell products to you hope they produce something you want, and give them money for it. It's as simple as that.

      Unless you believe that Amazon is secretly (and possibly illegally) selling your audio recordings and video recordings to other companies, and gets so much money THAT way it is willing to take the enormous risk to its reputation if proven.

      In the end, the simplest answer is just that Amazon wants to sell devices that it thinks people want.

      Now, you could argue for a danger here that the device is a possible vector for hackers to spy on you, but I doubt Amazon either wants to be the spy or wants hackers to spy on you. Again, their reputation is hugely important.

    5. Re:Fuck privacy. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It would be incredibly easy to test if an Echo device was recording and streaming all of your household conversations but none of the folks who think THE AMAZGOOGPPLE is always watching have ever bothered to test their hypothesis. If you think the techboogiemen are always listening and always watching why don't you monitor the data coming out of those devices and sound the alarm for the rest of us?

      Watch the watchers and all that jazz. )

    6. Re:Fuck privacy. by Guyle · · Score: 1

      I've logged the packets from my two Echoes since I got them at the router level. So far I've yet to see them upload any significant amount of data when someone in the house wasn't asking Alexa for something. Even when I saw something when I knew it wasn't me, I was able to find a corresponding log in the Alexa app showing my wife or daughter had done it.

      I welcome someone to actually come forward with packet logs showing voice data that WAS transmitted when someone WASN'T using it. Should be easy enough to come up with if it's happening, and I can't be the only one who's been sniffing packets.

    7. Re:Fuck privacy. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I welcome someone to actually come forward with packet logs showing voice data that WAS transmitted when someone WASN'T using it.

      That won't satisfy the tin hat crowd. The system could just be saving the data to be sent with the next transmission to throw off basic sniffing tactics. I have been involved in writing code which sent information about in-app activity for piracy identification, but we waited until they were getting monthly updates to send the traffic over so there wouldn't be obvious transmissions for anyone savvy enough to look.

    8. Re:Fuck privacy. by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

      Since you're not an AC I'll actually respond to that.

      Do you have the complete source code for the device available to you? That, after carefully analyzing it, can compile it, and compare to the binary that's in the device? If the answer is 'no' then you can't be sure there isn't code in there that can collect all audio and upload it back to Amazon. Just because it's not obviously doing it 24/7/365 doesn't mean it isn't capable of doing so when told to by it's C&C server.
      Oh, and by the way: Even verifying the code running on it is okay doesn't mean that future updates to the code can't contain surveillance capability. In fact, if I was designing a covert surveillance system that is ostensibly a 'helpful' home appliance like this, that's what I'd do: The normal code would be a mere appliance. An 'update' would contain the surveillance code. Then another 'update' later goes back to it being an appliance. That way there's no fingerprints left for anyone clever enough to actually dig into the thing to find out if it's been used for spying.

      Then there's the issue of hacking. Is the device secure enough that it can't be hacked to be used for 24/7/365 surveillance?

      Then there's the possibility that it's just waiting for specific keywords before it starts listening continuously. That goes back to the sourcecode question.

      I believe you when you say you've looked at the output with Wireshark and saw nothing out of the ordinary. But as you can see above what I am saying is that doesn't prove the negative. Unless it can be verified, the only safe option is to either turn the device off when you're not actively using it, or not have the device in the first place. Otherwise there is too great a potential for abuse.

      If you or anyone else really doesn't give a damn, then that's your choice, but if I'm right then you don't get to complain too much when it's discovered.

      Let me point out a few other things nobody else thought was surveilling them: Smartphones. Smart TV. Xbox Kinect. These are documented.

  4. Leaks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    These product leaks happen so frequently that I'm beginning to think it's just a marketing ploy to build buzz.

  5. Amazon Leak sounds like a great name for the thing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    People are stupid.

  6. Re:Amazon Leak sounds like a great name for the th by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

    Came for this. Was it them or B&N that created a tablet called the Paperweight?

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  7. Telescreen.. by LVSlushdat · · Score: 1

    Maybe Amazon ought to call it a "Telescreen" and use "Orwell" for its "wakeup word", as thats EXACTLY what it is.... There will be one of these in my home over my cold dead body...

    --
    THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
  8. "Leak" My Ass... by TheFakeTimCook · · Score: 2

    This is counter-PR pushed out BY Amazon to counter Apple's Phil Schiller participating in an interview where he said that a "Voice Activated Smart Speaker could benefit from a Screen".

    Considering that every time I browse something on Amazon, it appears magically in banner ads EVERYWHERE I browse, and yet, every time I browse something on Apple's site, it, er doesn't, I'd say I trust Apple to actually produce a device that doesn't spy on you.

    But this "Leak", coming in the heels of the Schiller interview earlier this week, is no accident, or lapse of security.

    And if it is, remember this is the same company that's handling your "overheard" Alexa audio...

    1. Re:"Leak" My Ass... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah. Clearly they built hundreds of devices with different form factors and features and then just waited to hear how Apple would act like middle school kid about their product. Now Amazon looks like they had the product all along...

  9. Underpriced by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

    I would pay much more for a device that constantly listens to me and sends all my conversations and data directly to Amazon and whoever else pays them to access it. MUCH MORE.

  10. Re:Amazon Leak sounds like a great name for the th by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

    I think it was Paperwhite. Amazon Echo is a good name though, because it echos all your conversations and data to Amazon and whoever else pays them to access it.

  11. This isn't news; this is an advertisement. by TheOuterLinux · · Score: 1, Insightful

    With words such as "leaked," people should know better. It's a bullshit term used to trick half-wit techies into clicking on an ad while feeling "cool" about it; it's their version of "lit." Amazon or any other company with an ounce of intelligence wouldn't let information of a new product sit on a server to be easily discovered unless it was intentional. Hasn't anyone noticed the "leak" ratio between competing companies? Microsoft "leaks" a laptop and then Amazon just happens to "leak" their new product. Apple will "leak" a new product soon too. Product secrets aren't kept in some magical container with holes to ooze out of. Some pseudo hacker runs a scraper they think they've cleverly made and then just happens to "descover" a new product. Companies know about scrapers and how people like finding "secrets" to tell. It's psychology used to bring free advertising.

  12. I'm Surprised They Have Time by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

    I thought they were spending all their Android-related effort to fuck up the Fire TV stick, lately. They just "updated" the interface to make it even more annoying. They made navigation less obvious and half the time I have to wait for the dashboard to load twice because the banner ad doesn't load the first time, and the dashboard is now first and foremost an ad-delivery system.

    Fuck you sideways, Amazon, I am never buying another one of your advertising delivery devices. My next streamer will be a Roku, and I'll probably drop prime. You so commonly fail to get my packages here on time that I'm not getting my money's worth anyway.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    1. Re:I'm Surprised They Have Time by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 1

      They seems to be rather brain-dead when it comes to designing interfaces. The new Xbox Amazon streaming app was re-designed a while ago, and of all things, they managed to screw up the transport controls. All they had to do was copy any one of the dozen other examples out there, but they apparently had to be "special".

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    2. Re:I'm Surprised They Have Time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Have you called Amazon CS and complained about your packages being late? They do work with carriers to sort that kind of stuff out and there might be a logistical hitch somewhere that is flying under their radar.

    3. Re:I'm Surprised They Have Time by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Have you called Amazon CS and complained about your packages being late?

      Yes. They stopped using California Overnight, which has helped. They seem to only hire incompetent douchebags now. (It's sad, because before they got involved with Amazon, CalOvernight was awesome.)

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  13. Why would you pay for this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Do you buy a store before you can go shopping in it? This makes no sense...

    On top of that, if you even do want this crap, how is this better than just using your smartphone's built in assistant? Then you don't have to go to a specific room just to use it. Is it a case of "I don't want to have to lift up my hand"? Jeebus.

  14. I think I have an early models of that, by pecosdave · · Score: 1

    Sony made the big one, Chumby the little one I have.

    I actually miss these things working properly. I've seriously considered redoing the insides to something a bit more modern.

    --
    The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
  15. Not interested in Amazon devices by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Do I trust Amazon anymore than I trust Google with devices? No. I use Amazon a lot but purely as a online retailer, not a company that makes devices. Mostly because Amazon provides a custom experience geared more towards other Amazon services than anything. As far as leaked new products, I almost always think these are pre planned publicity stunts than actually leaks.

  16. Riiiight by John+Jorsett · · Score: 1

    So Amazon leaves this on a public-facing server after having already been "burned" by an "accidental" leak in the same way? Uh huh.

  17. Optimism on Orwell's part by fyngyrz · · Score: 1

    Orwell was an optimist.

    --
    I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
  18. It's a Sony Dash or a Chumby by rjejr · · Score: 1

    This isn't new.