Samsung is warning customers about discussing personal information in front of their smart television set.
The warning applies to TV viewers who control their Samsung Smart TV using its voice activation feature.
Such TV sets “listen” to some of what is said in front of them and may share details they hear with Samsung or third parties, it said.
Fuck. You.
Well, pretty sure Jim would turn the tv’s ears red with his blue talk…
“Hey, Siri” is the same problem.
Except few people start a casual conversation in their living room with the words “Hey, Siri.”
People who buy Samsung sh*t deserve what they get.
True, but your iPhone has to listen to everything going on in the room so that it doesn’t miss the “Hey, Siri” trigger word. The Amazon Echo is the same. It listens to all conversations waiting for someone to say “Alexa” (or “Amazon”, if you prefer).
The Samsung Smart TV is likely just listening for its keywords, as well. The problem is in what the device does with the audio it hears that does NOT contain the keywords for which it is listening. If the audio is simply purged from memory banks a few seconds after it hears it, then no big deal. But in the case of the Samsung Smart TV, it sounds as though some of that audio is passed on to Samsung and their partners.
I’m curious about the success of these always-on listening devices at actually hearing their keywords. I had to turn off “Hey, Siri”, because it kept activating unexpectedly. I don’t have an Amazon Echo or an Xbox One to determine if they have the same issue, but it seems likely.
This is an obvious consequence of using such speech recognition technology. It has to capture everything said to look for keywords. The only difference here is that Samsung uses a third party speech recognition service so they have to send that captured audio to them.
Pretty sure “Hey Siri” is detected on the device. Nothing’s transmitted until that’s recognized.
Sure, that happens by accident sometimes, but it’s not written into the basic logic.
I agree. I don’t question whether my iPhone is transmitting anything until it hears “Hey, Siri,” but there’s no doubt it’s listening. I have no privacy concerns about it.
I can’t say for sure on the Echo or other devices, though.