7 ms·

Almond: An Open, Privacy-Preserving Virtual Assistant

181 points by tlrobinson 7y ago

tlrobinson 7y ago
Home Assistant (the excellent open source home automation project) recently integrated with Almond (and Ada for voice): https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2019/11/20/privacy-focused-voice-assistant/ https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2019/11/20/privacy-focuse...
- Fnoord 7y ago
  How do I know which home automation project I should invest my time into? I'm aware of at least 3 FOSS ones.
  - krageon 7y ago
    They do very similar things, usually even identical. Get the one that does the things you like (i.e. that's ready with very little configuration to do the things you would like for it to do). Maybe look at the community, see if the help given is given freely and positively. That will impact your enjoyment of the software and I feel like that is the most important factor.
  - ViViDboarder 7y ago
    There are a lot. Most robust community appears to be Home Assistant. It’s not very point and click friendly yet, though. If that matters to you.
  - JshWright 7y ago
    Home Assistant is the clear winner, in my mind. It's a very robust project (four full-time devs, plus a huge community), very actively developed (https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/categories/release-notes/ https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/categories/release-notes/), and has a very healthy and helpful support community.
  - smashah 7y ago
    Go by community. Home assistant is absolutely fantastic.
  - adamfeldman 7y ago
    Here's current discussion of Home Assistant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21665125 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21665125
  - ReverseCold 7y ago
    Home Assistant is the best one by a long shot. Largest community, most integrations, etc. Just one more comment for the pile of 5+ that already replied.
z3t4 7y ago
Too bad Chrome stopped supporting the web speech-to-text API. But I guess it overwhelmed Google's network/servers!? I remember back in Windows XP? There was speech recognition, where you first had to read a bunch of text in order to train it. It didn't use a online service afaik. And it was decent. With today's hardware it should be possible to do speech to text on the client! eg. without sending the audio to the cloud for processing!
- janimo 7y ago
  When did Chrome stop supporting web speech to text?
  - z3t4 7y ago
    It worked for me until recently. So a few months back... for android apps you need an app key, but there is no way to do that for a web app afaik, maybe if you used the google api instead of the standard web api. But i prefer platform independency and privacy over quality.
- rezonant 7y ago
  Web speech to text is still available on Chrome... https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/demos/speech.html https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/demos/speech.html
  - z3t4 7y ago
    I get a cryptic error message that just says "network", others seem to have the same problem. Does it work for you?? Here's another demo that shows the error message at the bottom: https://mdn.github.io/web-speech-api/speech-color-changer/ https://mdn.github.io/web-speech-api/speech-color-changer/
Quequau 7y ago
Can anyone tell me how this is "Privacy-Preserving"? Like how is this different than what the major tech firms like Google, MS, and Apple offer?
- t0astbread 7y ago
  From what I can tell it's available as actual software running on your device instead of an online service. Additionally, it seems to be fully free software.
  - eis 7y ago
    From what I can read in the privacy policy, speech recognition is performed via an API from Microsoft. So it's both online, cannot be considered fully free software (as a major part is performed by a closed API) and I'd hesitate to call it privacy preserving. At least when using the voice command feature. Written commands should be offline, private and done by open source I think. Someone please tell me I'm wrong.
ViViDboarder 7y ago
This talks about privacy and data ownership, but I can’t tell from the site if the processing is all local (like Snips or Mycroft) or if data still has to be trusted with a remote party. Maybe I missed something.
- mosselman 7y ago
  The privacy policy answers these questions: https://almond.stanford.edu/about/privacy https://almond.stanford.edu/about/privacy
- Erlich_Bachman 7y ago
  Mycroft is not at all all-local. It also sends audio data into the cloud for processing. It's a disgrace really.
  - ViViDboarder 7y ago
    Oh wow! Well, glad I went with Snips then.
jmiskovic 7y ago
I was more impressed by this project's backbone service Thinkgpedia, a common natural language interface to different web services and internet-connected hardware. I'll definitely find use for it in future! I started using Almond application for Gnome. It delivers on many fronts, but still lacks polish. Some typed prompts would never get an answer. Some prompts got misinterpreted, for example "tell me a dad joke each day at 9 am" would get scheduled at 12 am. The wake word is followed by audio ping, but there should also be a visual clue. Still, very cool technology. My favorite skill is "Miscellaneous Interfaces" with queries for random number, opening URL, throwing a coin... I'll try to stick with this for a week, to automate some OS actions and my git work flow.
- mattnguyen 7y ago
  I came across their NSF research proposal abstract [1] and it is indeed quite interesting. I'm curious about their federation model and how exactly they're enabling privacy. [1] https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1900638&HistoricalAwards=false https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1900638&His...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- jmiskovic 7y ago
  After few days of evaluating I see that Gnome client is broken in several fundamental ways and unusable as of now. - No way to clear history, it's getting huge now and mostly consists of "Sorry, I don't understand" answers - When going to My Skills and back to chat, it scrolls to beginning which is frustrating. - Scheduled actions never actually happen. - In-app "training" doesn't work, returns "Sorry, I did not understand that. Use ‘help’ to learn what I can do for you." - Online training _could_ work if one could learn their ThingTalk language. My usecase was simple - teach it that "throw dice" is same as random number from 1 to 6, but I could not conjure precise ThingTalk spell. - Screenshot, locking PC and other OS actions didn't work on XFCE. Not Almond's fault, but less usable for me. Are authors dogfooding? It lacks quite a few quality-of-life improvements.
eis 7y ago
From the Privacy Policy: > The Almond app also makes use of the Microsoft Cognitive Services Speech API to perform speech recognition. This is only activate when you click on the "Listen" button. ... These services are governed by their own privacy policies. Too bad. I hoped this would have an offline speech recognition engine. Also with all the talk about preserving privacy I find it disappointing that you have to dig through the privacy policy to see that your audio is sent to MS.
- capableweb 7y ago
  Yeah, with that 3rd party's (and whoever else) policy, Almond is neither "Open" nor "Privacy-Preserving". The title almost seems like clickbait now. The project itself (Almost) seems very useful though and I would gladly use it if it could run locally instead.
  - azinman2 7y ago
    Can you tell me what you found useful? None of their examples made sense to me... notify me when the nytimes adds an article? So... like constantly? Or filter on a keyword? Like I’m going to know ahead of time all the potential keywords for a given article of interest that hasn’t been written yet? And I need to know that second vs my daily news consumption during the right time?
- windexh8er 7y ago
  Check out Snips [0]. My guess is they could bake this in. I think if "smart" speakers had the option for the user to control how they wanted it integrated the consumer would have much control as it would force the manufacturers to compete where it makes sense (the hardware platform) vs what Amazon and Google do today to lock people in and use their data in ways the majority of us don't want it used. [0] https://snips.ai/ https://snips.ai/
  - fabrice_d 7y ago
    Snips was recently acquired by Sonos, so it's one less independent solution in that space.
leeoniya 7y ago
also https://getleon.ai/ https://getleon.ai/
- gravypod 7y ago
  It would be cool to integrate the deep speech engine with home assistant. That's one of the big benifits of leon in my opinion.
dang 7y ago
A thread from 2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17532003 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17532003.

181 points by tlrobinson 7y ago

Home Assistant (the excellent open source home automation project) recently integrated with Almond (and Ada for voice): https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2019/11/20/privacy-focused-voice-assistant/ https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2019/11/20/privacy-focuse...

Fnoord 7y ago
How do I know which home automation project I should invest my time into? I'm aware of at least 3 FOSS ones.
- krageon 7y ago
  They do very similar things, usually even identical. Get the one that does the things you like (i.e. that's ready with very little configuration to do the things you would like for it to do). Maybe look at the community, see if the help given is given freely and positively. That will impact your enjoyment of the software and I feel like that is the most important factor.
- ViViDboarder 7y ago
  There are a lot. Most robust community appears to be Home Assistant. It’s not very point and click friendly yet, though. If that matters to you.
- JshWright 7y ago
  Home Assistant is the clear winner, in my mind. It's a very robust project (four full-time devs, plus a huge community), very actively developed (https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/categories/release-notes/ https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/categories/release-notes/), and has a very healthy and helpful support community.
- smashah 7y ago
  Go by community. Home assistant is absolutely fantastic.
- adamfeldman 7y ago
  Here's current discussion of Home Assistant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21665125 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21665125
- ReverseCold 7y ago
  Home Assistant is the best one by a long shot. Largest community, most integrations, etc. Just one more comment for the pile of 5+ that already replied.

z3t4 7y ago

Too bad Chrome stopped supporting the web speech-to-text API. But I guess it overwhelmed Google's network/servers!? I remember back in Windows XP? There was speech recognition, where you first had to read a bunch of text in order to train it. It didn't use a online service afaik. And it was decent. With today's hardware it should be possible to do speech to text on the client! eg. without sending the audio to the cloud for processing!

janimo 7y ago
When did Chrome stop supporting web speech to text?
- z3t4 7y ago
  It worked for me until recently. So a few months back... for android apps you need an app key, but there is no way to do that for a web app afaik, maybe if you used the google api instead of the standard web api. But i prefer platform independency and privacy over quality.
rezonant 7y ago
Web speech to text is still available on Chrome... https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/demos/speech.html https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/demos/speech.html
- z3t4 7y ago
  I get a cryptic error message that just says "network", others seem to have the same problem. Does it work for you?? Here's another demo that shows the error message at the bottom: https://mdn.github.io/web-speech-api/speech-color-changer/ https://mdn.github.io/web-speech-api/speech-color-changer/

Quequau 7y ago

Can anyone tell me how this is "Privacy-Preserving"? Like how is this different than what the major tech firms like Google, MS, and Apple offer?

t0astbread 7y ago
From what I can tell it's available as actual software running on your device instead of an online service. Additionally, it seems to be fully free software.
- eis 7y ago
  From what I can read in the privacy policy, speech recognition is performed via an API from Microsoft. So it's both online, cannot be considered fully free software (as a major part is performed by a closed API) and I'd hesitate to call it privacy preserving. At least when using the voice command feature. Written commands should be offline, private and done by open source I think. Someone please tell me I'm wrong.

ViViDboarder 7y ago

This talks about privacy and data ownership, but I can’t tell from the site if the processing is all local (like Snips or Mycroft) or if data still has to be trusted with a remote party. Maybe I missed something.

mosselman 7y ago
The privacy policy answers these questions: https://almond.stanford.edu/about/privacy https://almond.stanford.edu/about/privacy
Erlich_Bachman 7y ago
Mycroft is not at all all-local. It also sends audio data into the cloud for processing. It's a disgrace really.
- ViViDboarder 7y ago
  Oh wow! Well, glad I went with Snips then.

jmiskovic 7y ago

I was more impressed by this project's backbone service Thinkgpedia, a common natural language interface to different web services and internet-connected hardware. I'll definitely find use for it in future! I started using Almond application for Gnome. It delivers on many fronts, but still lacks polish. Some typed prompts would never get an answer. Some prompts got misinterpreted, for example "tell me a dad joke each day at 9 am" would get scheduled at 12 am. The wake word is followed by audio ping, but there should also be a visual clue. Still, very cool technology. My favorite skill is "Miscellaneous Interfaces" with queries for random number, opening URL, throwing a coin... I'll try to stick with this for a week, to automate some OS actions and my git work flow.

mattnguyen 7y ago
I came across their NSF research proposal abstract [1] and it is indeed quite interesting. I'm curious about their federation model and how exactly they're enabling privacy. [1] https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1900638&HistoricalAwards=false https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1900638&His...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jmiskovic 7y ago
After few days of evaluating I see that Gnome client is broken in several fundamental ways and unusable as of now. - No way to clear history, it's getting huge now and mostly consists of "Sorry, I don't understand" answers - When going to My Skills and back to chat, it scrolls to beginning which is frustrating. - Scheduled actions never actually happen. - In-app "training" doesn't work, returns "Sorry, I did not understand that. Use ‘help’ to learn what I can do for you." - Online training _could_ work if one could learn their ThingTalk language. My usecase was simple - teach it that "throw dice" is same as random number from 1 to 6, but I could not conjure precise ThingTalk spell. - Screenshot, locking PC and other OS actions didn't work on XFCE. Not Almond's fault, but less usable for me. Are authors dogfooding? It lacks quite a few quality-of-life improvements.

eis 7y ago

From the Privacy Policy: > The Almond app also makes use of the Microsoft Cognitive Services Speech API to perform speech recognition. This is only activate when you click on the "Listen" button. ... These services are governed by their own privacy policies. Too bad. I hoped this would have an offline speech recognition engine. Also with all the talk about preserving privacy I find it disappointing that you have to dig through the privacy policy to see that your audio is sent to MS.

capableweb 7y ago
Yeah, with that 3rd party's (and whoever else) policy, Almond is neither "Open" nor "Privacy-Preserving". The title almost seems like clickbait now. The project itself (Almost) seems very useful though and I would gladly use it if it could run locally instead.
- azinman2 7y ago
  Can you tell me what you found useful? None of their examples made sense to me... notify me when the nytimes adds an article? So... like constantly? Or filter on a keyword? Like I’m going to know ahead of time all the potential keywords for a given article of interest that hasn’t been written yet? And I need to know that second vs my daily news consumption during the right time?
windexh8er 7y ago
Check out Snips [0]. My guess is they could bake this in. I think if "smart" speakers had the option for the user to control how they wanted it integrated the consumer would have much control as it would force the manufacturers to compete where it makes sense (the hardware platform) vs what Amazon and Google do today to lock people in and use their data in ways the majority of us don't want it used. [0] https://snips.ai/ https://snips.ai/
- fabrice_d 7y ago
  Snips was recently acquired by Sonos, so it's one less independent solution in that space.

leeoniya 7y ago

also https://getleon.ai/ https://getleon.ai/

gravypod 7y ago
It would be cool to integrate the deep speech engine with home assistant. That's one of the big benifits of leon in my opinion.

dang 7y ago

A thread from 2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17532003 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17532003.