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Amazon Echo, home alone with NPR on, got confused and hijacked a thermostat

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Re: Amazon Echo, home alone with NPR on, got confused and hijacked a thermostat

#41

Post by robterrell »

cowsandmilk wrote: post #33
jchendy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That actually seems kind of dangerous. It could cause people to pull out their phones to check whether the ad actually turned airplane mode on.

siri has itself trained to a single user's voice. I've never had anyone else's voice activate my phone with "Hey Siri". Admittedly, it usually takes me saying "Hey Siri" 3 times before it recognizes my voice, but I'm 100% certain a radio ad would get no response from my phone.

Siri is definitely not trained to a single voice. And yes, the car radio can turn it on. I've had a podcast discussion of Siri trigger it. It became such a joke that some podcasters have another phrase they say when they mean "hey Siri".

Re: Amazon Echo, home alone with NPR on, got confused and hijacked a thermostat

#42

Post by robterrell »

adamrezich wrote: post #28
manyxcxi wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are three options for trigger words. There's Alexa, Amazon, and Echo. We have ours set to Alexa (default) and when the neighbor girl comes over (Alexis) the Echo frequently wakes during conversations.

My sister was never great at keeping friends for long growing up, but it amuses me to no end that her two long-time friends she's had since she was very young... are named Alexa and Siri :v

Her future college roommate: Cortana?

Re: Amazon Echo, home alone with NPR on, got confused and hijacked a thermostat

#43

Post by foota »

cowsandmilk wrote: post #33
jchendy wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That actually seems kind of dangerous. It could cause people to pull out their phones to check whether the ad actually turned airplane mode on.

siri has itself trained to a single user's voice. I've never had anyone else's voice activate my phone with "Hey Siri". Admittedly, it usually takes me saying "Hey Siri" 3 times before it recognizes my voice, but I'm 100% certain a radio ad would get no response from my phone.

I have an acquaintance by the name of Siri, hilarity ensues.

Re: Amazon Echo, home alone with NPR on, got confused and hijacked a thermostat

#44

Post by untog »

teej wrote: post #16
imglorp wrote: post #6

Wow, this is a new DDOS attack vector. Get an ad on broadcast radio saying stuff like "alexa, order more milk", or "okay google, send a text to xxxxx".

Toyota ran an anti-distracted driving radio ad where they did this. The ad narrator says "Hey Siri, please turn airplane mode on." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqZBVTMrgFA

Similarly, I recall an Xbox One commercial with Aaron Paul which ended in him jumping onto his sofa and saying "Xbox on!"

...you can figure out what happened to anyone who already owned an Xbox One.

Re: Amazon Echo, home alone with NPR on, got confused and hijacked a thermostat

#45

Post by foota »

teej wrote: post #16
imglorp wrote: post #6

Wow, this is a new DDOS attack vector. Get an ad on broadcast radio saying stuff like "alexa, order more milk", or "okay google, send a text to xxxxx".

Toyota ran an anti-distracted driving radio ad where they did this. The ad narrator says "Hey Siri, please turn airplane mode on." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqZBVTMrgFA

Haha, watching the ad reminds me of the HAL shutdown scene from Space Odyssey

Re: Amazon Echo, home alone with NPR on, got confused and hijacked a thermostat

#46

Post by stronglikedan »

chatmasta wrote: post #13

"Alexa" also responds to her own commercials. [0] [1] [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/amazonecho/comments/3oxi7b/commerci... [1] http://motherboard.vice.com/read/people-are-complaining-that...

I'm pretty sure that they updated her to ignore those. At least, mine doesn't seem to respond to them anymore. She lights up blue to listen, but then goes back to sleep without action. Could be a mere coincidence though, but she still responds to other things on the TV (like Alexi's name from House of Cards). It was like a dad joke: funny at first, but annoying after a while.

Re: Amazon Echo, home alone with NPR on, got confused and hijacked a thermostat

#47

Post by dalke »

imglorp wrote: post #6

Wow, this is a new DDOS attack vector. Get an ad on broadcast radio saying stuff like "alexa, order more milk", or "okay google, send a text to xxxxx".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soupy_Sales#New_Year.27s_Day_i...

> On January 1, 1965, miffed at having to work on the holiday, Sales ended his live broadcast by encouraging his young viewers to tiptoe into their still-sleeping parents' bedrooms and remove those "funny green pieces of paper with pictures of U.S. Presidents" from their pants and pocketbooks. "Put them in an envelope and mail them to me", Soupy instructed the children. "And I'll send you a postcard from Puerto Rico!"

Re: Amazon Echo, home alone with NPR on, got confused and hijacked a thermostat

#49

Post by dominotw »

imglorp wrote: post #6

Wow, this is a new DDOS attack vector. Get an ad on broadcast radio saying stuff like "alexa, order more milk", or "okay google, send a text to xxxxx".

>Wow, this is a new DDOS attack vector. Get an ad on broadcast radio saying stuff like "alexa, order more milk", or "okay google, send a text to xxxxx". reply

You can change the default from alexa to something else.

Re: Amazon Echo, home alone with NPR on, got confused and hijacked a thermostat

#50

Post by dalke »

jandrese wrote: post #37
eddieroger wrote: post #12

What's really great about this is that it's a joke on the future that's been predicted so many times already, my favorite of which being the last vignette on Disney's Carousel of Progress. The future family is talking about points in a video game, and the oven hears it and turns the temperature way up, ruining another family Christmas dinner - the joke being that this convenience was finally going to make Dad able to…

I remember this joke going way back to the DOS days. The story goes that a developer was demoing his new voice control system for the computer when from the back of the room a voice shouted "FORMAT C COLON", followed by another voice shouting "YES".

There's an SNL skit from the 1970s with a (vaguely) similar premise. The short-order cook takes the order when the waitstaff yells out "cheeseburger". A patron doesn't want a cheeseburger as it's too early. The waitstaff says that it's not too early and everyone else has ordered a cheeseburger, and points to the other patrons exclaiming for each "cheeseburger". Which causes the cook to start making a large number of cheeseburgers.

Here's the skit: https://youtu.be/puJePACBoIo?t=215 .

These are all jokes based on in-band signalling failures.

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