4 ms·

I'd be willing to bet, the speech recognition is tuned to recognize common vocabulary over proper names. So it is purposely choosing "theatre" instead of "Peter

• garblegarble 9y ago
  >I'd be willing to bet, the speech recognition is tuned to recognize common vocabulary over proper names. So it is purposely choosing "theatre" instead of "Peter?". Yeah, I think that's the case: it will usually get "Peter" but maybe 3 times a week it hears "Theatre". The problem is we have multiple bedrooms - so we'd need to come up with unique but common and unambiguous names that also feel natural to each person (which is the hard problem - we have 13 hue lights, 6 smart switches, a nest & a few software defined switches that do things like send commands to the TV to switch to specific apps)... or just add a new device group for each common mispronunciation and call it a day. The reason I'm so insistent about Alexa understanding more about context is that within a room there are obvious, common vocabulary short names for devices, but coming up with a natural global naming structure within a house is less obvious (we experimented with calling the bedrooms front/middle/back but that phrasing isn't natural) Basic room contextual information would also make for a really natural configuration UI within the app: you create Rooms, you add your Smart Home Devices (optionally assigning each a name within the room) and your Echo to a room. When matching against a "(Turn|Switch) (on|off) :device" expression, it can first match against room-specific names and then fall back on global names.