The real cost of smart speakers
Alexa’s recording you. What’s she doing with it?
Read Sara’s article about the privacy settings on your smart speaker: https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/12/9/22160427/amazon-alexa-google-assistant-siri-holidays
Correction: At 0:58, we mistakenly suggest that every 1 in 5 American households has a smart speaker. In fact, over one-third of U.S. adults has a smart speaker. We regret the error.
In 2014, Amazon debuted a simple but industry-changing product: the smart speaker. Technically the Amazon Echo was just a microphone attached to the internet that you installed in your home. But it let users ask a digital assistant, Alexa, thousands of questions and commands, and it was a hit. Before long, Google and Apple followed with their own smart speakers, and today, a device that began as a curiosity has become commonplace: one in five US households now owns a smart speaker.
Smart speakers offer convenience; much of their popularity can simply be chalked up to that. But tech companies are also clearly pushing the technology onto consumers hard, sometimes selling smart speakers at rock-bottom prices, and building the “listening” technology that drives them into all sorts of other products, from headphones to doorbells. And a big reason for that is all the data that they produce.
Just like our web searches, online purchases, and social networks, every command you give to a smart speaker is a new piece of data that tech companies own. Most likely, your voice recordings are already being used for improving those companies’ listening algorithms and ad targeting, but there’s very little transparency and no way to know exactly how they use human voice data. All we really know is that these devices have enabled their manufacturers to collect gigantic troves of voice recordings — and that opting out of it isn’t always easy.
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Saying that our phones do the same thing is such a lazy argument to make….ALL of this is scary and as smart technology increases, the scarier it gets….smartphones are included in “smart technology”…and assuming the people scared of smart technology also don’t fear the data selling etc on our devices? I’d argue that those people are typically the ones who are scared, people can fear more than one thing at once.
My Alex’s went off when they guy said Alexa what’s the weather
The deranged menu assembly back because shorts crucially prepare atop a sparkling open. happy, magical algebra
2:00 activated my amazon echo 😅
The smarter the home, the dumber the people are who live in it.
2:00 activated my amazon echo 😅
how do you think did the speaker get so good? how do you think face recognition works so perfect? how do you think cars can drive by themselves?
It’s all training a computer, a simple KI that. Learns by "consuming" data. Data that comes from you.
Basically you create new technologies, that you can then buy…
2:00 gdi my alexa gave me the weather
I just realised the reason I get advertisements of random things all the time is probably because Siri doesn’t speak Hungarian and constantly misunderstands all my conversations o_o
answer? data
The real cost of smart speakers?
We don’t know.
Videos like these that prevent us for going full 1984
Glad that i use Siri. Privacy first
Siri spying on you and collecting information for sales to advertisers bottom line is a business personal information for sales
Done
That device stealing privacy.
The true irony?
There is a direct correlation between those people who seek ways to disable such data collecting features, and the people who complain that those apps don’t work good enough for their standards
Another great Vox video as always. i’ve never liked the smart speaker concept. While it’s due to the privacy issues, I also have issues with their usability. I got a smart speaker from Google as part of promotion from a hardware store. It’s annoying to use and misses morethan it hits. It does do good in streaming Spotify, though.
This speaker cost more than you’re adoption fees
Why would anybody pay money to bug their own home?! Makes zero sense 😂😂😂😂😂😂
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i thought this was going to be an environmental impact video
are those delete, opt-out buttons are only just for our satisfaction? do they really work?
I think I’d rather get ads that are of interest to me, rather than ads that are irrelevant. The latter tend to get creepy sometimes.
Americans: Our FREEDOM and PRIVACY is the most sacred in life.
Also Americans: Put a company SPY in the middle of their homes willingly.
Meanwhile Europeans: I see what are you up to Alexa!!!
This is by far the silliest video I watched in a while . . .
Well of courses they need to evaluate the performance of these devices throughout our interactions with’em 🙄 . . . To think otherwise is frankly shortsighted . . Which brings the question . . . What kind of a question,request or even conversation you had with one of these devices you wouldn’t want the manufacturer to know about? Enlighten me please
I use it strictly for simple or recurring reminders and alarms.
these tech companies are just trying to make you buy more things
Its also worth asking.. is it really that hard to pick up a phone and google something…
dogs` bones
I know where my echo dot is! sitting in the garage unplugged you cant cater your amazon experience to me jeff!
Let’s face it, were just literal blocks of data for computers at this point
It’s like real life big brother
non-english speaking households go brrrr
Don’t look at me, I use a pair of Boss speakers that were manufactured around 1983.
Ever since I bought an amazon echo, Alexa and my phone have talked to each other non stop. It’s great company as I live alone, but later they’ve been discussing my kinks out loud due to me sometimes forgetting to use NordVPN which makes is very awkward when my parents come over lol
Total life surveillance, it’s free.
Well it’s not really a "complete" mystery now is it. They could have added a little more context but good vid, everyone’s now thinking of motive
Why would anyone care? This is fear mongering. And of course a percentage of people are uncomfortable with this because all the fearmingers are acting like it is a big issue. It’s not. Again, why should anyone care?
omg thank you I just change the settings !!!! 🙂
We got one of those too. No need for anyone to tap the phone anymore now lol
Gh
the same theory can be applied to credit cards 🙂
Done
Dear I’m scared of the data these speakers harvest crowd, have you heard of something called a smartphone?
Oh no!!! They have saved all my questions about the weather and playing music!!! End times people!!! 🤪
Who cares, it’s cool.
I was making a video fo speakers bfb and this came up
*WOW*
1 in 5 American household? Is that for real?
The mystery questions might be that a company might say Ohh our servers got hacked and some data is stolen. Then that’s where things get creepy. But mostly companies have a good firewall and security in their system so these issues might not happen, Definitely.