4 ms·

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 m

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 :)

mintplant 11y ago
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!"
- petercooper 11y ago
  We used to do this at work. "Hey Siri! Call [person's partner]". Everyone turned their voice activated stuff off quite quickly after that.
- detaro 11y ago
  There was a demo a while back where some researches created radio interference in headset cables to trigger Siri remotely. It would also be interesting if you could create sounds that sound like commands to the algorithms, but are not easily recognizable for the user.
  - ntumlin 11y ago
    Something similar to your idea was done for images recognized by neural nets and posted to HN recently. https://codewords.recurse.com/issues/five/why-do-neural-networks-think-a-panda-is-a-vulture https://codewords.recurse.com/issues/five/why-do-neural-netw...
- Twirrim 11y ago
  That could be a fun programming exercise for one of these devices you can hook into Alexa, see if you can catch unauthorised voices quickly and effectively without badly impacting response times. e.g. you could do it by buffering the request, checking and submitting once you're confident about authenticity, but then you'd be delaying submission and response, depending on how much you'd need to buffer to gain sufficient confidence that the individual is authorised.
- kuschku 11y ago
  This was a common way to troll Xbox players: If they used speakers, shout "Xbox Off" loud enough via the voice chat (in a multiplayer game) and their devices turned off.
- rurounijones 11y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWZLa4AnN5k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWZLa4AnN5k for a more humourous application.
- zaroth 11y ago
  Isn't that exactly why iPhone / iOS will ask you to say 'Hey Siri' several times when you activate the feature? I assumed it was tuning the recognition to key on just [approx] that voice. 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.

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 :)

mintplant 11y ago

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!"

petercooper 11y ago
We used to do this at work. "Hey Siri! Call [person's partner]". Everyone turned their voice activated stuff off quite quickly after that.
detaro 11y ago
There was a demo a while back where some researches created radio interference in headset cables to trigger Siri remotely. It would also be interesting if you could create sounds that sound like commands to the algorithms, but are not easily recognizable for the user.
- ntumlin 11y ago
  Something similar to your idea was done for images recognized by neural nets and posted to HN recently. https://codewords.recurse.com/issues/five/why-do-neural-networks-think-a-panda-is-a-vulture https://codewords.recurse.com/issues/five/why-do-neural-netw...
Twirrim 11y ago
That could be a fun programming exercise for one of these devices you can hook into Alexa, see if you can catch unauthorised voices quickly and effectively without badly impacting response times. e.g. you could do it by buffering the request, checking and submitting once you're confident about authenticity, but then you'd be delaying submission and response, depending on how much you'd need to buffer to gain sufficient confidence that the individual is authorised.
kuschku 11y ago
This was a common way to troll Xbox players: If they used speakers, shout "Xbox Off" loud enough via the voice chat (in a multiplayer game) and their devices turned off.
rurounijones 11y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWZLa4AnN5k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWZLa4AnN5k for a more humourous application.
zaroth 11y ago
Isn't that exactly why iPhone / iOS will ask you to say 'Hey Siri' several times when you activate the feature? I assumed it was tuning the recognition to key on just [approx] that voice. 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.