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Well hang on - doesn't my iPhone already do all this? And presumably so does the Android equivalent? I appreciate this will have much better microphone technology but it still seems a little redundant.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I grow tired of this pathetic baseless fear mongering every single time anything is posted with voice control. You people completely ignore the mode of operation and start making idiotic claims about "well NSA!" In this case, as the website makes clear, you have to say the word "Alexa" for it to start listening. If you had been paying attention to the mobile scene even a little bit you'd know that this is on-chip lis…
> Nothing will be transmitted to the cloud unless it is the word "Alexa" You can't be certain that there's no way to activate it remotely without you knowing. Seven mikes in your lounge is an attractive nuisance.
I bet that market will be huge, eventually.
> With enhanced noise cancellation, Echo can hear you ask a question even while it's playing music. I read: "Our cloud servers can hear you, no matter what." It's a killer idea. It's too bad privacy concerns might lead it to an early grave.
> With enhanced noise cancellation, Echo can hear you ask a question even while it's playing music. I read: "Our cloud servers can hear you, no matter what." It's a killer idea. It's too bad privacy concerns might lead it to an early grave.
I grow tired of this pathetic baseless fear mongering every single time anything is posted with voice control. You people completely ignore the mode of operation and start making idiotic claims about "well NSA!" In this case, as the website makes clear, you have to say the word "Alexa" for it to start listening. If you had been paying attention to the mobile scene even a little bit you'd know that this is on-chip lis…
Incorrect. The device is always listening, waiting for you to say "Alexa" so that it can start acting upon your commands.
I'd take Amazon's claim that no data is transmitted or stored without the wake word "Alexa" purely at face value. There have been enough examples of devices and corporations collecting/sending data they weren't meant to in the past few years for us to deny any new closed-source device the benefit of doubt.
So no, this isn't "pathetic baseless fear mongering".
Frankly I despair at future of Voice recognition based services which target a very narrow demography. You would hope things would improve with time, but nope. Does anyone else who isn't a native English speaker has seen this problem?
Why does Amazon think people want these products? If I want to search stuff like that I would use my smartphone that is always with me. If I want to search with my voice, then I'll use the voice search found on my smartphone. Why would someone want a device that is always actively listening? Why would I pay 200$ for something that my smartphone already does?
As to why you'd want a device that is listening - and does something when its triggered - is that you can arbitrarily activate it with your voice. For example, if your hands are full, or dirty, because maybe you're cooking or changing the oil in your car, or cataloging the stuff you have stored in your garage.
It doesn't take too much imagination to see why Amazon would invest in creating such a product.
So the product is named "Echo" but you ask it questions by calling it "Alexa"? That's just odd.
So the product is named "iPhone" but you ask it questions by calling it "Siri"? You don't buy a Cortana either, you buy a product named "Windows Phone" (?). What's odd to me is that Alexa is way more common name for humans than Siri is. I wonder what false positives will do for households with a human Alexa.
I'm not considering the iPhone/Siri example the same. Siri came much later after iPhone and is not the primary mode of iPhone operation.
Well hang on - doesn't my iPhone already do all this? And presumably so does the Android equivalent? I appreciate this will have much better microphone technology but it still seems a little redundant.