A Chinese research firm has discovered that all our our various voice assistants (Alexa, Siri, OK Google and Cortana) listen to frequencies well beyond the range of human hearing. Therefore, if a malicious command is pitch-shifted above that range, our devices will hear it and execute it without any of us knowing about it.
Here's the video of it in action:
On the surface, this looks a bit scary: the parts are cheap, there are apps that will shift the frequency of any input (though it may need to be washed through the app a few times, but that's not hard, just time consuming). And maybe it is scary, but there are some things that you can do about it. Read on.
The big news from this last week in the Internet of Things is that Amazon and Microsoft are talking to each other. At least, they are through their digital assistants. You can now 'summon' Cortana through Alexa and vice-versa.
The big idea that helped these two Seattle area volcanoes of tech to work together is that their two assistants are good at different things. Cortana integrates well with Microsoft Office and the Bing search engine. Alexa is good at almost everything else. This means that you will soon be able to say natural sounding phrases like, "Alexa, open Cortana. [pause] Hey Cortana, what's on my Outlook calendar for today?" All from the same speaker thingy sitting on some shelf in whatever room you are in.
I like my virtual assistants, be they "Hey, Google" or Alexa. (I've not owned an Apple product since long before Siri. As for Cortana, well she may be fine, but who knows?) But they are not perfect. Each has their own set of problems, be it interoperability with the apps I want to use or the trigger words that are used to 'wake' them up. However, the thing that irks me the most about them is that they are only kind of polite.
By 'kind of', I mean that they follow the intent of polite conversation, but not the forms. They respond quickly with relevant information (most of the time) if they are address correctly, but they do not handle words like 'please' and 'thank you' and 'you're welcome' with any grace. Ffor instance, if you say, "Alexa, please tell me about the weather," then Alexa will tell you about the weather, ignoring the word 'please' as irrelevant to the request. Then, after you have the information, if you say, "Thank you," you get nothing in return. Instead, you have to say "Alexa, thank you". Only then will you get a "You're welcome." It does not fit into a natural conversation. At least in the style of American English in the beginning of the 21st Century.
As I've spent the last few weeks expounding on the 'trap' of automation as an economic policy, I've not commented on a few of the things that have been happening in the more immediate world. I'm not done with the concept, far from it (read up on Techno-Feudalism, O constant reader), but I'll give it a rest this week.
It is time once again for me to fret and strut my hour upon the Blog-o-sphere. The obvious targets for my sound and fury are all of the April Fool's jokes that bounced around the interwebs on Saturday, but no; those are asking for the abuse and so I will pass them by.
Instead, I'll focus my ire on something else: the Galaxy S8 announcement, specifically Bixby. As a brief disclaimer, I worked for Samsung for over nine years, but I'll try not to let any sentiment, good or bad, color my judgement.
For those of you who do not follow smartphone press releases (what do you do with your lives?), Bixby is Samsung's voice assistant offering, but there is more. It is also a info-card system on screen (Bixby Home) and an image recognition system through the phone's camera (Bixby Vision). Each is designed to add context and suggestions to the actions people take with their Galaxy S8 phone.
What separates it from the other voice assistants already in market (and also on the Android driven S8) are a few things:
It can work with supported third party apps and potentially do anything that the user can do with their hands. While there aren't many such apps yet, that may change over time depending on how aggressive Samsung goes after developers.
It can do image recognition. If you see an object that you like, a pair of shoes or a car or whatever, then point the S8 camera at it and it will bring up information about that object.
It can interface with Samsung's going line of smart things, including SmartThings. This is maybe the biggest differentiater as Samsung makes many of the things that we all want to be smart. They can directly influence products as they go to market instead of trying to buy their way into someone else's refrigerator or TV line.
That Being Said...
There are a few things that are less good about Bixby versus some of the other voice assistants on the market.
First, there is a button. For me, one of the biggest advantages of Alexa or Google Home is that they are completely hands free. I can be washing the dishes and get the lights turned on or off, skip a music track or get the weather. In all fairness, the same can be said of Siri, Cortana and the in-phone version of the Google Assistant. But for a smart home, it make is less useful.
Next, it is only on the Galaxy S8 and S8+. While the Galaxy line of phones are popular, this is still a flagship product that will take time to trickle down to the masses. Admittedly, smart home owners and users are closer to the 1% (called mass premium consumers in marketing parlance), but the Venn diagram of smart home owners and Galaxy early adopters strikes me as small right now.
Finally (at least for the purposes of this article), this is not Samsung's first foray into the world of voice assistants. They launched S-Voice in 2012 in response to Siri. It did not go well. Much of this was due to a lack of developer support and buggy performance. Things that do not bode well for Bixby.
There is Room
I hope that Bixby does well. Not only for all of my former colleagues at Samsung and their job security, but also because it increases the competition in this area. I would hate for the consumer innovation world to give up on this thinking that Amazon, Apple and Google have won. Remember, In the early 2000's, we were a Yahoo! world and no one thought we needed Google. There is still room for someone to reinvent the voice assistant market.
I received my Google Home on Friday and have been messing around with it all weekend. Overall, I like it. I even like it better than the Amazon Echo Dot that I used to have (and still have as it is now up in my master bedroom on my bedside table so that we can whisper sweet nothings to each other). But nothing, especially a first generation product, is perfect.
I'm not going to compare it to the Echo Dot (better speakers, adds Google Play Music) because tons of reviews have already done that. Instead, I'll focus on the unboxing, setup and smart home control stuff.
Unboxing and Setup
The Big G is doing the same thing that all big tech companies do: making the unboxing more of an unveiling. There is a text riddled sleeve that slips off to reveal a box with a tab sticking out. (I added the Alice-in-Wonderland text, but I 'wonder' why Google didn't? Not classy enough?)
