Soon You Won't Have to Say 'Hey Google' to Launch Google Assistant | Hacker News Reader

Soon You Won't Have to Say 'Hey Google' to Launch Google Assistant

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14 pointsjoeyespo20 comments

Soon I will be able to be monitored by Google without my consent. Since now it will be hard to know what word will trigger it or even if I will hear the result of the trigger word.

I had the same thought. I wonder if this is not already happening.

Huh? I don't disagree that devices like GH might listen in on you more than you are aware of, but how does customizing the trigger word change anything beyond which word summons an interaction?

I mean why would changing it from 'hey google' to 'hey alfred' or even simply 'alfred' make GH more likely to monitor you without consent? Why would it be harder to know what will trigger it, or make the results less likely to be heard?

In theory, the device could only listen for its trigger word using local processing, which then and only then would trigger a cloud upload to process the following phrase. The user has implicitly indicated "I'd like a cloud lookup on this please, and I understand what I say next is going somewhere out of my control."

If you go with continuous recognition and upload, you then have everything you say being removed from your control. You'll see situations where cloud providers' records are subpoena'ed like that murder case with Alexa. [1] You'll also see cloud providers say "if you want to hav a private conversation, you best leave the room." [2] That's terribad for everyone.

1. https://www.engadget.com/2017/03/07/amazon-hands-over-alexa-...

2. https://www.cnet.com/news/samsungs-warning-our-smart-tvs-rec...

I don't think they would move to continuous recognition and upload. I think it would simply be listening for a different keyword, which it would recognize on-device, and then upload the audio following that.

It would be pretty insane if every android smartphone was continuous uploading audio to Google's servers for processing. Can you imagine the processing requirements, the bandwidth load, the battery drain?

Mobile, yeah, but going by the above two references, both the Alexa and Samsung examples _are_ doing something with continuous upload or they wouldn't be in the news.

If you had bothered to read the article...

>While Alexa is constantly listening, it only records data after the "Alexa" or "Amazon" commands are given. However, the Echo speaker was reportedly streaming music near the tub, and investigators believe it could have been awakened intentionally or accidentally. If so,the presence of a recording could tell them if Bates was awake when he said he was sleeping, for instance.

It only sends data after hearing its wake up words, just like everything else. If it were constantly streaming they would be caught as soon as someone decided to fire up wireshark (i.e. very soon after release.)

I even ripped apart an Echo dot a little while ago, de-soldered the NAND from the device and dumped the FireOS-based ROM to take a peek myself. It is indeed performing audio processing for the wake-up word entirely locally.

This is the most important comment here. Some independent verification.

Worthy of a blog post?

Well, it looks to me that all we have at the moment to get upset about is some speculation. We need to make a bunch of assumptions to get to 'Google is logging everything we say'.

Someone messes with my phone, makes my wake word my name and hands it back to me. Even better someone messes with a bunch of my friends phones and makes their wake word my name and they don't notice and I'm being monitored by them.

This is a scenario you’re really worried about? You give some nefarious party unfettered access to your phone and the phones of all your friends and the worst they do is change the wake word for Google Assistant?

You’re not worried about the invasive spyware they might install or the on-device data the might steal? You’re worried that they’ll do something annoying like send a few extra audio samples to Google (not themselves) until you notice that Google Assistant is being weird and you fix it?

Thank goodness for spineless enemies.

I find it funny how selective privacy warriors like to impose their beliefs on user privacy on other people, but yet have no desire to go all in and prohibit the user tracking performed by their credit card companies, ISP and cell carrier. A real privacy warrior would use cash only or barter, use payphones only and only log into BBS's using an acoustic coupler modem connected to that said payphone.

Trigger words have their place, but come on Google, Amazon, and Apple...the obviously correct primary way to tell the device you are about to speak a command or query should be by tapping a replica of a Star Trek combadge worn on the front of your shirt.

At its simplest, all this needs to be is a Bluetooth button paired with the device. Higher end badges could also be available that include microphone and speaker and can communicate with the device over something longer range than Bluetooth, such as WiFi, to provide access to the device when outside of voice range.

Such badges already exist for hands-free calling with cell phones [1], so its not like there is some technological limit to building such things.

[1] http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/jmgi/

Great. Can't wait for the day when I can selectively summon Google Home without having to awake every single Android device within an earshot.

There's actually a support page for this, outlining the steps to make sure that this doesn't happen (basically: have Google Home installed on your phone). It doesn't work.

Really looking forward to this feature! I've had Google Home since the first day it became available in the UK and it's proven to be really useful. I love how I can ask Google random questions and it gives me very accurate answers, play my favourite songs or let Google surprise me by suggesting a music genre. Depending on my mood I might ask Google to play anything from classical music to heavy metal.

The best thing about Google is that the more I use it the more I discover how useful it can be. For example last week I was running up and down through my flat packing some stuff and I quickly had to go to a grocery store at 10PM and I thought instead of opening my Google maps and check all nearby stores manually I thought I'll try to ask Google which grocery store is still open near me and it gave me a perfectly matching answer. I was really impressed!

I had the opposite experience. I asked Google:

"Hey Google:, whatis the score of [University] basketball game?"

Even though the game was going on, Google told me about the women's basketball game the following day. It took about 5 min before I could get Google to give me the results I wanted.

I have had a lot of results like this--Google becomes useless. It's faster for me to search for it by hand.

Various Android phones have had that for ages. Shouldn't be very hard.

My 2014 Moto X did this. When I switched to a Nexus 6P I was bewildered why I could no longer pick my own phrase.

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