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Invoking virtual assistants like Amazon's Alexa and Google Home to do your bidding are an impressive convenience, but sometimes, things get lost in translation.
The technological marvels have got nothing on "Rosie the Robot" from The Jetsons, but what Alexa and Google Home are capable of doing is still jaw dropping.
Alexa, Amazon's intelligent personal assistant, made her debut in November 2014. The program is capable of voice interaction, playing music, giving traffic and weather reports, setting alarms, streaming podcasts, playing audiobooks, and is a few capabilities shy of scratching your back.
Similarly, the Google Assistant is a variant of Alexa that was announced in March of 2016, to rival Amazon. Google uses in-house and third-party services to interact with voice recognition to activate smart home appliances, enable hands-free phone calls, as well as play music.
Both are exceptionally cool and convenient devices designed to make our lives easier. Some of the time.
Call it growing pains. These tech devices still have a long way to go, as the occasional glitch inconvenienced these homeowners.
Say what?
Not all glitches were fails. Some were ominous and invoked a sense of uneasiness in a household that had both virtual assistants communicating with each other. Allison tweeted:
My aunt got a google home for Xmas & she already has “Alexa”. This morning we were messing around with the google home and asked, “okay google what do you think of Alexa” and it answered “I like her blue light” and from across the room Alexa turned on and said “thanks”. im scared
While another incident was just downright creepy.
But rest assured, there won't be an A.I. apocalypse.
Apparently, Alexa thinks she's cornered the market on comedy. Emily tweeted, "One of my supervisors kids was telling her a joke in front of her Alexa and out of no where Alexa said 'thats a funny joke.' And then proceeded to tell her own joke."
Some struggled with the invasion of privacy. Alexa has the capability of regularly "listening-in" in private conversations and can stream voice recordings always to be ready to respond to a trigger or wake word.
Alexa and Google Home can identify any person in the room with non-stop audio pick-up from enabled devices. But not always.
Alexa carries evidence.
The device's listening function still poses a problem when you have a loquacious pet in the house.
You can't say Alexa isn't motivational.
This will teach you to be more articulate.
In spite of it all, human error will still be dominant.
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H/T - Twitter, Wikipedia, Wikipedia2