101–110 of 128 posts
I'm not comfortable with the idea of everyone having far-field microphones in their homes. Cell phone spying is bad enough. If these become widespread, then ten years from now instead of a political debate about call metadata it'll be a debate about literally every word ever spoken .
and no different than a telescreen (1984). No one will leave home without one.
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Yeah, Echo is a good listener. In fact, when I ran the video on the OP's site and he said "Alexa, what time is it?" my Echo in the other room woke up and told me the time :)
That's actually one of my concerns about voice-driven interfaces, absent some sort of voice print authentication or tactile confirmation button. Imagine standing up in a crowded room and shouting "OK Google, delete everything!", or "OK Google, recite the first thouand digits of pi!"
I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Jasper [1]. Its a cool little but very well organized project that I put together this Christmas. [1] http://jasperproject.github.io/
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Yeah, Echo is a good listener. In fact, when I ran the video on the OP's site and he said "Alexa, what time is it?" my Echo in the other room woke up and told me the time :)
That's actually one of my concerns about voice-driven interfaces, absent some sort of voice print authentication or tactile confirmation button. Imagine standing up in a crowded room and shouting "OK Google, delete everything!", or "OK Google, recite the first thouand digits of pi!"
It's not "secure" in any sense, but it cuts down on false positives and perhaps some very juvenile hacking attempts. Any professional hacker will generate a close-enough voiceprint that you can't use voice recognition inherently (purely passively) as authentication any time soon.
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This is what is going to make Echo the next big computing platform. The voice recognition just works. It's like being on the Enterprise.
That's how I felt when using Siri and Cortana the first time. "Wow! Voice recognition actually works now??"
Very specifically, you can speak in a conversational tone with Echo, vs barking commands at Siri.
I don't have experience with Cortana, but the Voice Recognition capabilities in the XboxOne is garbage.
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How often are you talking to your smartphone from the other side of the room? Usually it's a few inches from your face.
Not to mention smartphones seem to be explicitly designed to not provide this use case. Where is my always listening Google Now? If I have to take my phone out of my pocket and unlock it, I may as well type the question myself.
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In my limited experience using Echo at my parents house over the holidays I was distinctly not impressed by the Echo's abilities to understand voice from across the room. We often had to repeat ourselves, only louder and slower to get the Echo to understand us. We do not have strong accents.
Exact opposite for me, does a great job at recognizing speech but a horrible job providing answers to even simple questions.
I love my echo (alexa), especially the convenience of "no button but wake word" when I have my hands full in the kitchen. That said, google voice is so much better at parsing my questions that I'd pay a bunch of money for another standalone device with wake word which would integrate with with google voice. Any chance of hacking that, or linking your device with both? (Ask Amazon / Ask Google)
Google's question parsing is ridiculously good. You can also do neat things like say "When I get to work, remind me to email John" and you'll get a notification when you arrive. I don't have an Echo, but I imagine it can't do such contextual things. You could get a dedicated Android phone/tablet, and leave it always plugged into a charger somewhere. I just tested it on my Phone (LG G3 Android 5.0.1), and I'm able to…
Too much to hope for I suspect.
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That's how I felt when using Siri and Cortana the first time. "Wow! Voice recognition actually works now??"
If you haven't tried the latest rev of Echo software, it blows Siri out of the water. Very specifically, you can speak in a conversational tone with Echo, vs barking commands at Siri. I don't have experience with Cortana, but the Voice Recognition capabilities in the XboxOne is garbage.
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What do you use it for? I love the idea of Echo, but I can't think of enough I'd do with it to warrant buying one.
Ever tried to call somebody while cooking? As a dad who spends most of his home time in the kitchen cooking and cleaning and parenting, hands-free tech is glorious.