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WoodBoogerSpork t1_j24yqgf wrote

Reply to comment by halfanothersdozen in Google Home speakers allowed hackers to snoop on conversations by chrisdh79

Ok so somewhat on topic, but really more just a question for someone else that has "good boys". Do you ever hear Google responding when you ask your dog "Who's a good boy?" or just even "Good boy."? I'll be talking to my dog and from out of left field Google will tell me "Sorry I don't understand."

I AIN'T EVEN TALKING TO YOU, GOOGLE!

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reichbc t1_j259qtw wrote

The speaker doesn't understand "what you're saying" - it listens for key vocal frequencies that more or less come together to form the expected phrase "Ok, Google" - Assuming you have not fully voice trained your Assistant, it has to fuzz its listening expectations, as it doesn't know your specific voice frequencies that correlate with "Ok, Google".

What you end up with is a system that's listening very broadly for something that sounds like "Ok Google" and with the amount of fuzzing needed to capture that, "good boy" can come close enough on key frequencies to match up with "okay" and then any further speech might match up with a fuzzed expectation of "google".

Think about it, some people repeat phrases to their dogs a few times, "Who's a g__OO__d bo__Y__? wh__OO__'s A good boy?" (cap'd and bolded for fuzzy syllables probably recognized)

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IAmGrum t1_j25ic9t wrote

"who'S A GOOd boy" sounds a lot like "HEY GOOgle"

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