The three biggest players in voice assistants –– Google, Apple and Amazon –– have radically different approaches to profiling users, Northeastern University researchers say.
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.
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
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.)
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
It can if you use an LLM as the interface with guidelines instead of rules
I use Home assistant with the Preview box for local control, so I can spy on myself.
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.
One thing we overlook in ideological debates is that most forms of socialism and communism would have no use for advertising and marketing. Imagine all this effort going to productive endeavors and having an IRL adblock.
May my last online purchase be a beret.
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
Yeah, but the nsa can listen to you through it.
That’s not what this is about. That’s a different story
