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> One difference could be that if you discover your phone is listening and sending data that's a scandal right there while digital assistants do it by design.

> One difference could be that if you discover your phone is listening and sending data that's a scandal right there while digital assistants do it by design. What do you mean? All digital assistants I know about use a wake word and they all seem to respect it very seriously: - Incidents where the assistant has misheard the wake word causes headlines across the Internet and there's always a reply from an official spokesperson (e.g: https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/24/17391898/amazon-alexa-private-conversation-recording-explanation https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/24/17391898/amazon-alexa-pri...) - When Google Home Mini had a (hardware) bug where the button could cause it to record all the time, Google issued a software update which disabled the button completely. For months the button was a no-op. https://www.cnet.com/news/google-dumps-home-minis-top-touch-function-over-privacy/ https://www.cnet.com/news/google-dumps-home-minis-top-touch-... - In the Google Home app you can see all recordings that the device has done, play them back, and see how it was interpreted. It's pretty clear that they want to be transparent about what the device does. All in all it seems to me that Google/Amazon is aware that a "we record everything"-scandal can be devastating for the product.

close04 8y ago
Maybe I wasn’t vert clear. They have the recording and sending functionality built in as main attraction. And they’re made to send that data because that’s their purpose. My phone is not supposed to do that so if I discover it does the intentions are clear. And now slightly tangential, my phone will never accidentally hear the hot word, start recording, send the recording. It can’t accidentally misunderstand my pronunciation and do whatever the hotword squatter wanted to do. It’s easier to abuse the one core functionality of a device than one that’s an afterthought and can be more easily disabled or stands out when it’s used. That’s because the legitimate and abusive behaviors almost perfectly overlap from a user point of view in a digital assistant. Imagine being spied through an always on live streaming camera and being spied through camera that’s off most times. You may notice it powers on and sends data it shouldn’t.

close04 8y ago

Maybe I wasn’t vert clear. They have the recording and sending functionality built in as main attraction. And they’re made to send that data because that’s their purpose. My phone is not supposed to do that so if I discover it does the intentions are clear. And now slightly tangential, my phone will never accidentally hear the hot word, start recording, send the recording. It can’t accidentally misunderstand my pronunciation and do whatever the hotword squatter wanted to do. It’s easier to abuse the one core functionality of a device than one that’s an afterthought and can be more easily disabled or stands out when it’s used. That’s because the legitimate and abusive behaviors almost perfectly overlap from a user point of view in a digital assistant. Imagine being spied through an always on live streaming camera and being spied through camera that’s off most times. You may notice it powers on and sends data it shouldn’t.