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TV anchor says live on-air ‘Alexa, order me a dollhouse’
- unpythonic 10y agoGiven that everything must go through shipping & handling which is typically measured in days, what is the benefit to ordering immediately? Surely these services could batch your requests through the day and push a confirmation request to the buyer(s). The risk of unintentional purchases seems much too high, and one doesn't lose much convenience with a quick confirmation.
- cstejerean 10y agoThe benefit is not forgetting to order it later.
- paganel 10y agoIf you forget to order it later then you didn't really need that bad, money saved.
- Klathmon 10y agoSo if I forget to get more laundry detergent when I notice it's out that means I didn't need it anyway? If I forget to put cat food on the grocery list, I guess they didn't need to eat that much...
- paganel 10y agoForgetting about laundry detergent happens to me all the time, I do the laundry the next day or the day after that, it's not the end of the world. About buying cat food I agree, you should be more careful, if you forget buying food for your cats then I don't think a software program like Alexa it's going to help you with that.
- Klathmon 10y agoBut it does help me with that! I have in the past forgotten to do these things. I have in the past run out to the store at 1AM to pick up cat litter because I felt so bad I couldn't sleep. Yes, there are other ways of solving this problem, but the Alexa works best for me. Before the Alexa, I had a DIY rapsberry-pi button I'd use that would reorder specific items when I hit a button. I did this even before the dash button things because I know that it worked for me. I just don't understand why people are so against this product existing. It makes my life better in a way that's worth the cost. You might not like or need it, but I do. I'm sure society would be able to function without the "TV remote", but the fact that people find it convenient to control the TV from a distance makes it a nice to have. This is my convenience. This is one of the things that makes my life better in a small way.
- douche 10y agoThe time to notice that you're running low on something is when you're starting to run low on it, not when you've exhausted it, I would say. I can understand that if one was living in a tiny apartment in the city, where it is easy to go to the store and storage space is at a premium, the on-demand model for getting your groceries and housewares might make sense. It would make me anxious, though; I'm a stockpiler that gets itchy if I have less than six months of canned goods and a freezer full of meat for the winter.
- Klathmon 10y agoYouve never made a mental note to get more of something then forgot? You've never written something down only to find the grocery store is out of it? Or forgotten the list at home? Maybe I'm just really forgetful, but I have. And since using the Alexa like this, I don't. That's better. I'm not blindly ordering everything through it, but some things definitely got the model very well.
- chris_7 10y agoJust go to a bodega?
- Klathmon 10y agoWhy not just tell my Alexa when I'm running low? Amazon is cheaper than my local store, I won't forget to do it, and it shows up by the next time I need it.
- nialo 10y agoI think you are making false assumptions about the way other people's brains work. We can't all remember to do things later, no matter how badly we want to. Would you say the same thing about someone who kept a small notepad in their pocket to write these sorts of things down? What's the difference between a notepad and this? What about someone who asks their (human) partner to remind them to order dish soap later? How is that different? (admittedly neither a human partner or a notepad would be fooled by a TV announcer, so that's a meaningful difference. On the other hand, it really seems like a bug in Alexa, not a problem with the users)
- grecy 10y agoAmazon has same day delivery for plenty of large cities now.
- Klathmon 10y agoYou can put voice ordering behind a voice pin number to prevent this which I like more as it keeps the whole interaction on the Alexa.
- wonko1 10y agoI don't really get the appeal of voice prompted ordering. Is there really a big enough market of people for whom this is more than a novelty? For many products, you want to do at least some research before ordering. For products you order regularly, reordering is usually only a couple of clicks/taps.
- condescendence 10y agoIt would be cool if they could integrate it with a service like peapod (grocery shopping brought to your door). "Alexa, add to list x" and eventually "alexa order list x" Other than that is pretty much novelty like you said.
- yo-code-sucks 10y agoIt does this already.
- glitch003 10y agoOr, say, Amazon Fresh and Amazon Prime Pantry? (Both deliver products similar to peapod)
- dunham 10y agoAlso, "Amazon Now" - Amazon has a few overlapping services for this sort of thing.
- gkoberger 10y agoWell, Alexa will only actually buy something if you've already purchased it (EDIT: Seems this isn't true anymore!). The use-case of this is something lie "Alexa, buy more toilet paper" or "Alexa, we're out of salt." Saying it from across the room while cooking is much easier than washing your hands, grabbing your phone, loading the app, searching for the product, and hitting "buy". It's definitely meant more as a replacement for a shopping list than it is a way to, say, do your Christmas shopping.
- 10y ago
- jcoffland 10y agoThis could be mostly solved by allowing people to rename their digital assistants.
- colordrops 10y agoGood point. Are households with someone named Alexa completely unable to use this product?
- skuhn 10y agoNo, there are two other name options available: Amazon and Echo. Echo is my preferred one, since it's two syllables.
- beagle3 10y agoJust don't watch any episode of "dollhouse" where the lead character played by Eliza Dushku is called Echo
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- malloreon 10y agoYou can change the wake word to 'amazon' or 'echo'
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- azinman2 10y agoI'd rather change the entire persona. Alexa, siri, google, etc are all bland and boring. Not surprising given the creators. I want a sassy NeNe Leakes!
- 10y ago
- tzs 10y agoThese devices should be using multiple microphones so that they can tell where sounds are coming from, and during setup they should be shown the location of the TV and exclude any commands coming from there.
- zwily 10y agoThey do use multiple microphones and know where you are. (They don't let you tell it where a TV is though. )
- azinman2 10y agoExcept relative to my echo I'm often close to the tv. "Hey Siri" does a pretty decent job at having you quickly train your voice and only answer when it's you say the wake word.
- manmal 10y agoIf it reacts to any voice, it's unusable for anyone with kids. Shopping really has to be locked down to authorized people's voices. Is it even legal for kids to order stuff on the internet?
- kuschku 10y agoGood question! The answer is, depending on country. In Germany, all children of any ages can buy anything with previous approval by the parents. From age 7 on products costing less than the monthly pocket money cna be bought with approval after buying, from age 14 on all products. So, as a result, you might have a 4 year old child ordering something online, and have to honor the order (just as 4yos frequently are sent to fetch bread from the neighbourhood bakery). Obviously, cultural values affect this heavily — while in Germany and Japan this is normal, in many areas of the US people below 16 are not expected to act on their own, or buy things, so it can be obviously different.
- chmod775 10y agoThough in Germany, products sold to children not meeting the criteria (i.e. being bought without the approval of their parents) can be returned, since law places the fault with the seller. As well as the fact that any product bought online can be returned within 2 weeks without explanation. So there's an incentive for the seller there to limit accidental purchases, since those will likely cost the seller more than the disgruntled parent, who at most has to pay for shipping the product back and forth.
- cooper12 10y agoIf I remember correctly, doesn't Apple's Siri get trained to your voice so other people don't activate it? It only seems appropriate for Amazon to make sure only specific voices are associated with purchasing rights or else kids will just be ordering anything. There really should have been some sort of authentication method for sensitive things like this.
- azinman2 10y agoI do often have guests over that use it. Having the option does sound good. You can also already restrict purchases. Mine only adds to the shopping cart, for example.
- csours 10y agoIs that the default? It really seems like that should be the default..
- rebuilder 10y agoPersonalized voice recognition, especially when your receiver is somewhere in your room, not in your hand, is probably easier said than done. I'm guessing the more accurately it detects who's speaking, the more it will fail to work at all due to noise etc.
- kalleboo 10y agoIt does, but it's not an exact science. My wife trained hers, but her Siri responds better to me than it does to her...
- jayjay71 10y ago30 Rock has a great scene making fun of this very scenario. It doesn't seem to be readily available online, although it's on the episode ¡Qué Sorpresa! for those interested. Then Forbes wrote an article explaining why this can never happen. http://www.forbes.com/sites/briancaulfield/2012/01/12/hed-why-that-scene-with-the-voice-activated-tv-in-30-rock-will-never-happen/#6c7f1ecf22f6 http://www.forbes.com/sites/briancaulfield/2012/01/12/hed-wh... Edit: It is worth mentioning that Alexa being outside the TV does make a difference, as it's unlikely to have a directional microphone as would likely be installed in the TV.
- will_pseudonym 10y agoI just want to go home and delete everything on my DVR!
- humanrebar 10y agoDilbert from 1994: http://dilbert.com/strip/1994-04-24 http://dilbert.com/strip/1994-04-24
- orblivion 10y agoSo this is the new taboo? We have to watch what we say on tv and radio because a lot of people decide to buy this product?
- nkkollaw 10y agoIs it just me, or the subheading is "Story on accidental order begets story on accidental order begets accidental order"?
- Kiro 10y agoYes, it's a joke.
- nkkollaw 10y agoWhy, what's "begets“? I don't get the joke :-/
- oneeyedpigeon 10y agoThink of it as a synonym for 'creates'. It's very archaic; the classic use is biblical. There's a passage - I think early on - that goes something like "Jacob begat Balthazar, Balthazar begat Abraham, ... etc." Goes on for 50 odd names and essentially means "fathered" in that context.
- nkkollaw 10y agoAh, got it (sorry, English isn't my first language).
- 746F7475 10y agoCan't wait when commercials just go: "Alexa, buy <whatever we are selling>".
- sccxy 10y agoI wonder if it would qualify as computer crime if you do it on purpose.
- kevin_thibedeau 10y agoThrough the window: "Alexa, unlock the garage bay doors".
- icameron 10y agoDo Alexa TV commercials wake up Alexa? Like the one that has "Alexa, call me an Über"?
- mcphage 10y agoOccasionally. Sometimes the echo flashes to indicate it heard it's name, but not enough to respond to.
- kimburgess 10y agoToyota ran and ad campaign in Sweden in 2015 that targeted Siri: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqZBVTMrgFA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqZBVTMrgFA. In their current state, voice assistants appear to be wide open for abuse. You think auto-play ads on sites are bad now? Wait until they start auto-ordering for you too.
- Normal_gaussian 10y agoThat add is genious
- Keverw 10y agoOh wow. That's a neat ad, but kinda creepy... What if someone was already using their phone hand free? Listening to Pandora to their cars BlueTooth? Or even if they weren't using their phone at all - the fact that Siri is being activated without them doing so could be a distraction. Or maybe even stop their turn by turn navigation... So then they have to try and drive while restarting it. Maybe they don't even remember the address, so they have to open the app and go to recents or check their email(Not Sure if Siri handles that part too). I wonder if they'd be prosecuted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act if they did that same thing here in America. Hacking people's phones from the radio it feels to me.
- pluma 10y agoNavigation was actually the first problem that came to my mind too. There are plenty of legitimate uses of smartphones while driving. Airplane mode seems like a solution to the wrong problem.
- chris_7 10y agoWhy is this in English? Both the ad itself, and the prompt for Siri - which is presumably set to Swedish on most people's phones in Sweden?
- Normal_gaussian 10y agoI don't know what the Siri prompt actually is in Sweden, however 'Hej' is an incredibly common greeting there and sounds like Hey.
- c3534l 10y agoI don't understand why people are blaming the news report for this instead of Alexa.
- Noseshine 10y agoYeah, noticed that too. I think humans are playing life like I used to play chess or even Civilization: like an FPS (first person shooter) game. Don't think more than a single step ahead, just shoot at the first thing that you see! They blame (and punish) the kid that "explodes" and not the bullies taunting him/her for months. They blame the whistleblower. They blame the reporter and the symptom. They blame the reaction and not the cause. They overwhelmingly target the immediate thing/person that causes a disruption, and what is most surprising to me - even if the actual cause is apparent and not hard to find!!
- ianai 10y agoThat's been my takeaway as well. If I could talk to the next bullying victim considering murder before the act I would point exactly this out. Society will then label you the problem when your bullies were the actual problem.
- Esau 10y agoThis is why I feel that people should be able to set their own word for Alexa to listen for.
- Tharkun 10y agoIf your device is stupid enough to order things when some random person on TV tells it to, then your device probably shouldn't be in people's homes.
- ianai 10y agoWhat are the other use cases for it?
- zython 10y agoI wouldnt phrase it that way. But it is very badly designed that the voice command purchasing is enabled by default, and should be changed that when set up it has to be explicitly activated.
- DashRattlesnake 10y agoFrankly, Amazon should be held liable for any order that cannot be proven to have been ordered by the device owner (or authorized user) plus any extra time and effort required by the customer to make it right (e.g. time, labor, and materials or boxing it up and sending it back for a return). Hell, it should also pay its customers for the hassle of finding themselves drafted into being beta testers.
- LorenPechtel 10y agoI think the real problem here is the lack of a confirmation. How it should work: "Alexa, order me a dollhouse" Alexa: Do you want me to order an XYZ dollhouse? "Yes". Alexa: Delivery is expected on xx/xx/xx. or <anything else> Alexa: forgets about the dollhouse. Last night my wife and I spent about half an hour talking and SIRI activated twice--neither of us said anything to her and she doesn't even understand my wife's accented English very well. Casual voice recognition simply isn't up to the reliability to do automatic orders yet.
- krallja 10y agoThat is how it works.
- jasonkostempski 10y agoI've been waiting for this for years :) I figured it would be some shock jock saying, "Ok Google, show me pictures of child porn" over the radio, causing people to panic while driving and that would be the end of stupid, always-on, voice commands.
- LorenPechtel 10y agoOh, that's evil! Or, how about "Ok Google, how do I assassinate the president?"
- JabavuAdams 10y agoDid any orders actually happen, or is this a fake outrage story?
- echosmith 10y agoNo, it asks for a confirmation at the very least, and a voice code as well. Hacker news is filled with morons who know little to nothing, just like any other sufficiently large online community.
- glitch003 10y agoI wonder if it's possible to create a TV commercial that says "Alexa, order me a dollhouse" but not trigger the Amazon Echo in the room, by doing something like playing ultrasound static at a louder volume than the "Alexa, order me..." which would overload the Alexa microphone but would be too high of a frequency for your ear to hear.
- rsfern 10y agoIt might be possible to come up with an analogy to adversarial images in object recognition networks -- just take a clip of the speaker saying the keyword ('Alexa', 'Ok google') and tweak it until it's no longer recognized by the machine, but sounds normal to a human. I doubt that Amazon will release their voice recognition models and parameters though...
- StavrosK 10y agoAh, censorship by robot, where we have to watch what we say in public for fear of triggering people's assistants.
- phaed 10y agoViral purchasing?
- smoyer 10y ago"Telly station CW-6 said the blunder ..." I don't think it's a blunder to say (almost) any sentence ... we do still have freedom of speech. To think that these viewers would expect that no one ever utters the phrase again is ridiculous. Next they' expect there to be legislation prohibiting certain words on any broadcast. An as more voice controlled devices are created, there are bound to be conflicts. If they'd written this article correctly, they'd have an auto-playing audio clip that says "Alexa, order me a sandwich". A child named "Ok Google" will be the next version of "Little Bobby Tables".
- tbrownaw 10y agoJust because you can do a thing, does not mean you should do that thing. If something has harmful or annoying consequences, especially to people you don't want to piss off, doing that thing by accident really is a blunder no matter how much legal right you may have to do it. (Also known as "freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose".)
- philipov 10y ago> If something has harmful or annoying consequences... You blame the person who built the thing to have harmful and annoying consequences. The one who made the blunder here is Amazon.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- IgorPartola 10y agoFreedom of speech protects you from government persecution. Nothing to do with whether you thought through what you were going to say or not.
- Retric 10y agoIf Amazon etc have zero security that's their problem not mine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaker_recognition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaker_recognition is hardly a new thing. Further, if Amazon get's 200,000 orders for a doll house in the same second should be able to detect that as a mistake.
- tetraodonpuffer 10y agoCouldn't the assistants (google, alexa, siri) be improved to do voice fingerprinting for specific commands (like purchases, unlock the front door, ...) where only certain voices are allowed to execute them?
- abiox 10y agoi believe so, but i wonder how many false-negatives would arise from background/accompanying noise.
- tombrossman 10y agoSerious question, what's preventing someone from exploiting this for profit? For example, could you list a uniquely named item on Amazon (perhaps as a Marketplace seller) and charge high restocking fees? Then instead of just trolling people for a laugh, your business model would basically be collecting restocking fees.
- mikerg87 10y agoThis is so 2014. I remember when when Xbox users with Kinect had this happen. http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27827545 http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27827545
- imsofuture 10y ago"ill-conceived TV spot" Not sure that was the ill-conceived bit.
- khrm 10y agoThis blunder seems to be mild in comparison to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5p0gqCIEa8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5p0gqCIEa8
- dlss 10y agoSounds like someone needs to either (a) get a patch out, or (b) pass a law before alexa-aware advertisements become a thing.
- dkarapetyan 10y agoAnd now we enter the era of cybernetic capitalism and runaway purchasing loops.
- sogen 10y agoThis reminded me of the Halloween III tv commercial...
- kahrkunne 10y agoSeems like a critical flaw in voice-control. Imagine a prankster driving through town with speakers blasting "Alexa, order me 20 dollhouses".
- mherdeg 10y agoI wonder whether fewer people in the US will be naming their children "Alexa" or "Siri" in the coming years.
- _coldfire 10y agoHad this thought too. Mass broadcast will eventually learn and issues like this avoided, but what about the life of everyone with those names and their acquaintances? Simply talking to or about them in your living room can now be a problem ranging from mild annoyance to credit card purchase.
- dplgk 10y agoFor the HN crowd, I'm surprised most comments here focus on ordering things via voice. There's a much more disturbing lesson here and it's not far fetched at all compared to most doomsday theories. Right now, Alexa et Al can control your home, I'm sure it's one step away from summoning your Tesla. What comes after that? Then all you need is an IoT exploit deployed and an implanted Alexa time bomb that's triggered by a commonly uttered phrase. Without the exploit, you could probably get pretty far with a mass broadcast, "Alexa, have Tesla drive to Times Square"
- mrob 10y agoThis is a technical problem and can be solved by technical improvements. The listening device needs enough microphones to locate the exact position of the sound source. If it never moves then it's not a human and it should be ignored.
- peterwwillis 10y agoWhat a time to be alive.
- ChuckMcM 10y agoI always chuckle at these, and yes voice independent recognition is always going to have this challenge. I tried a half dozen different "activation" phrases for my Moto-X and they all triggered at odd times by non-activation things (like the movies). The really useful next step will be voice independent language recognition with voice dependent command recognition. That and accent independent language recognition. That is one of the, if not the, next billion dollar acquisition by one of the big players.
- crooked-v 10y agoThis makes me wonder how long until some musician or band does a Superbowl ad with "Alexa/Siri/Cortana, play _____", followed by silence.
- JoeAltmaier 10y agoConfused. Alexa doesn't order anything unless you do it manually. It just creates a shopping list. So somebody say "Alexa, order me a dollhouse" and the viewers' shopping lists got something scribbled on them. Nobody bought anything.
- awqrre 10y ago"Alexa, order me a new tin foil hat"... by the way, how does Alexa knows that you said Alexa without sending anything to the cloud if it needs the cloud to decode any speech?
- alxndr 10y agoAmazon is currently running a TV ad which has three people saying "Alexa..." commands; I wonder why that ad isn't also causing false positives?
- synicalx 10y agoJust quietly, I'm looking forward to a new form of wardriving where you hang out the window of your car with a mega phone and ask Alexa to buy expensive jewellery or sex toys.