{"id":5627,"date":"2019-10-26T09:14:13","date_gmt":"2019-10-26T09:14:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=5627"},"modified":"2019-10-26T09:14:17","modified_gmt":"2019-10-26T09:14:17","slug":"the-voice-assistant-bug","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=5627","title":{"rendered":"The Voice Assistant &#8220;Bug&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>All those &#8220;intelligent&#8221; voice assistants &#8211; Google, Siri, Alexa, smart cars (not not &#8220;Smart cars&#8221;), etc. all have a seriously damaging misfeature. It is most evident (and indeed amusing) when you are watching a review of a smart car.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>All of these voice assistants activate when they hear a particular sound pattern (a word) which is fixed. Now there are probably technical reasons why it is fixed, but that does not mean they cannot be overcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I don&#8217;t <em>want<\/em> to address a smart device by a name that I cannot change. I want to shout &#8220;Slave! Get me a cup of coffee&#8221;, not &#8220;Alexa! Phone Alex&#8221;. Which is of course a nice to have feature, not a bug.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But what about about attacks? Say &#8220;Okay Google, turn off all alarms&#8221; (and your victim is late to work), say &#8220;Okay Google, set an alarm for 3am&#8221; (and your victim is grumpy at work).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That &#8216;trigger word&#8217; (or phrase) is in effect a password &#8211; not a very secure one, but one never-the-less. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lastly there is what hilariously happens when you see a review of a new car with a voice assistant made by a certain car company whose name starts with &#8220;M&#8221;. Because of course a reviewer will use the &#8220;M&#8221; word whilst describing the vehicle, and the miscommunication with the assistant is a hilarious indication of how rubbish voice assistants are (they aren&#8217;t really but that&#8217;s the impression you get). <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Make the trigger word\/phrase adjustable, and this all goes away. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"683\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018-12-13-Surf-In-The-Wind.jpg?resize=683%2C1024&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-5459\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018-12-13-Surf-In-The-Wind.jpg?w=683&amp;ssl=1 683w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018-12-13-Surf-In-The-Wind.jpg?resize=200%2C300&amp;ssl=1 200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 683px) 100vw, 683px\" \/><figcaption>Surf In The Wind<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>All those &#8220;intelligent&#8221; voice assistants &#8211; Google, Siri, Alexa, smart cars (not not &#8220;Smart cars&#8221;), etc. all have a seriously damaging misfeature. It is most evident (and indeed amusing) when you are watching a review of a smart car. All of these voice assistants activate when they hear a particular sound pattern (a word) which <a href='https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=5627' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[1668,1893,1894,1892],"class_list":["post-5627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-it","tag-ai","tag-okay-google","tag-siri","tag-voice-assistant","category-4-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1f2KI-1sL","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5627"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5630,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5627\/revisions\/5630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}