The three biggest players in voice assistants –– Google, Apple and Amazon –– have radically different approaches to profiling users, Northeastern University researchers say.

  • madjo@feddit.nl
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    11 hours ago

    My Google speaker only hears me say “hey Google, set an alarm in x hours” and “stop”. Good luck profiling me.

    And I turned off the Google assistant in my car. It was more a nuisance than a blessing. It would trigger if you said “eierkoeken” which was hilarious when we were talking about those things during a road trip.

      • madjo@feddit.nl
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        2 hours ago

        Yeah it kinda sounds like it. The eier kind of sounds like hey, and koeken sounds a bit like Google.

        I’ve had a few other accidental activations, that I couldn’t explain that easily, even from podcasts, that I decided that I didn’t need it. But in Android Auto I couldn’t find to option to turn off the activation phrase, so instead I turned it off completely.

  • morrowind@lemmy.ml
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    14 hours ago

    It’s not surprising. Most of Google’s profiling is though the web. They don’t bother with the speakers and stuff too much because they don’t need to.

    It’s not very useful anyway, any number of people could be using the speaker, regardless of who is signed in

  • hansolo@lemm.ee
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    19 hours ago

    So even the most sophisticated profiling is wrong a significant part of the time.

    Great. Glad its been so worth it to scoop up all my data and leak it everywhere just to not know how to use it for your stated intended purpose.

  • qwestjest78@lemmy.ca
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    1 day ago

    I loved my Google Home when I got it in 2017, but when I got into home automation, I realized it is dumb to have to tell a device to do things. Motion sensors basically replace the main thing Google Home does and a Bluetooth speaker is cheap to buy.

    I never trusted that they weren’t listening to me all the time with the speakers and I never looked back after I donated them away.

    • JustAnotherKay@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Yeah, just having a microphone in the house with some predefined voice controls which you can go and change gives you all of the benefits of a Google home with none of the Google bullshit.

      Especially now with LLMs getting so big, just go set up voice-to-text ollama session with predefined prompts and responses

      • shalafi@lemmy.world
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        8 hours ago

        That handles automation, but can’t freestyle questions.

        “Hey Google, convert (metric) to (Imperial).”

        “Hey Google, weather today?”

        “Hey Google, what’s the capital of Kakistan?”

        I have a ceiling-mounted mini in almost every room and just toss questions around while I work or play. Or, just ask it to play music. (Which went to shit when I cancelled Spotify.)

        • gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          7 hours ago

          Or, just ask it to play music. (Which went to shit when I cancelled Spotify.)

          I learned how to get Home assistant working JUST to restore this feature. Fuck you Google for not supporting other services despite supporting controlling them once it starts going ugh

  • Ebby@lemmy.ssba.com
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    1 day ago

    These devices are almost always listening, and the companies behind them are already collecting our data.

    Uh oh! Clicks scary link

    The good news is, they aren’t recording all the time … and when they are activated accidentally, the recordings are typically short.

    :/ alrightythen

    • Fushuan [he/him]@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      So what it’s saying is that it doesn’t need 24/7 recordings to profile us in a way that’s profitable for them because we are some basic bitches, right.

      • Ebby@lemmy.ssba.com
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        19 hours ago

        Just pointing out clickbait. They don’t even accurately reference their own articles. I stopped reading after that.