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Ask HN: Does your Amazon Echo talk to you without being asked?

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Re: Ask HN: Does your Amazon Echo talk to you without being asked?

#21
I just had it happen to me. She all of a sudden started talking about a Halloween song that I had asked her to play weeks ago (she acted like she just finished playing the song).

I checked the app, and the last query was when I asked her the weather from earlier this morning.

Must be a bug in the latest update they pushed out.

Re: Ask HN: Does your Amazon Echo talk to you without being asked?

#22

Yes, although not when things are silent. Once every week or two the Echo misinterprets something as a command and breaks into our conversation with a seemingly out of nowhere response. Sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's annoying. I can't recall ever having this issue with "Hey Siri" and I don't own a Google Home

I've noticed this with Alexa on a new Fire 10 over the last week. I think she's picking up on something on TV since we've been home with a newborn, but seems like this just started within the last week and a half.

Re: Ask HN: Does your Amazon Echo talk to you without being asked?

#25
post #18

This is slightly OT, but a great prank is to use the 'say' application on OS X (there is a ladies' voice option that sounds very similar to Alexa but the name evades me) and hook up the Alexa as a BT speaker. You can also use a sleep before the say command so that you can be away from the computer and have deniability. I did this to my family last April Fool's Day and it was hilarious.

The Alexa voice is also available on AWS’ text-to-speech service, Polly: https://aws.amazon.com/polly/

Re: Ask HN: Does your Amazon Echo talk to you without being asked?

#26
Yeah that's a hot mic. I was going crazy and thought it was all the Tylenol I was taking for my pancreas lately - but no.

It sure can be a nifty device to live with, but sometimes I pull the damn plug out of the wall. My dwelling isn't exactly an ashram, but to hell if I'm living with that thing monitoring me around the clock.

Re: Ask HN: Does your Amazon Echo talk to you without being asked?

#27
post #9

Yeah it definitely does sometimes. I use "echo" as the wake up word and it certainly has woken up on entirely unrelated words.

You’re successfully using a two syllable wake word? So far every assistant seemed to have been requiring three: Hey Siri (3), Alexa (3), Computer (3), Cortana (3), OK Google (4), Hey Google (3)...

Re: Ask HN: Does your Amazon Echo talk to you without being asked?

#29
Yes, this happens to me on an Echo Dot. The responses I've noticed don't seem to be replaying previous queries but rather completely unrelated queries to the people in our house or our location. It's like a classic "crossed wires" from the old telephone operator. I guess it happens once/twice a month.

Re: Ask HN: Does your Amazon Echo talk to you without being asked?

#30

Yes, this happens to me on an Echo Dot. The responses I've noticed don't seem to be replaying previous queries but rather completely unrelated queries to the people in our house or our location. It's like a classic "crossed wires" from the old telephone operator. I guess it happens once/twice a month.

Interesting, this was an echo dot for me too. I have both a dot and regular Echo and haven't heard anything from the Echo, although it's in the other room and I might not notice at night. Maybe a Dot thing.
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