back to article TV anchor says live on-air 'Alexa, order me a dollhouse' – guess what happens next

A San Diego TV station sparked complaints this week – after an on-air report about a girl who ordered a dollhouse via her parents' Amazon Echo caused Echoes in viewers' homes to also attempt to order dollhouses. Telly station CW-6 said the blunder happened during a Thursday morning news package about a Texan six-year-old who …

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        1. John Watts

          I got that command to work but half of the nearest supermarkets are the other side of the Thames Estuary apparently - that's another issue entirely but one that should probably be sorted ou before we start relying on computers to do what we ask.

          1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

            "half of the nearest supermarkets are the other side of the Thames Estuary apparently"

            Also live by the side of a river, the nearest crossings being 2 miles down river or 3 miles up river. And without fail, EVERY system I've ever used to locate the "nearest" $something will not take the river into account. It's pure line of sight. Even my SatNav, although the SatNav does actually direct me to the tunnel or bridge when actually planning a route.

          2. peter_dtm
            Mushroom

            stupid postcodes

            that is because of the stupidity of insisting on using postcodes for all location - it's not like the legal location system is illegal or something - National Grid Referances (NGR) are vastly superior; easy to use; and as acurate as you need. Postcode locations always assume that adjoing postcodes are actually mutually acccesable not across a river; the wrong side of the mountain or even in one of the other home nations.

        2. TheProf

          OK Google, what's the closing time of nearest supermarket?

          Well it worked first time for me. Correctly.

          Which is more than I can say for the Americans I've met who couldn't understand my British (Liverpool but locals ask me where I'm from) accent.

          "Excuse me, could you tell me where the bathroom is?" Blank look on American face.

          (With phoney American accent) "Excuse me, could you tell me where the bathroom is?" "Oh yeah! Over on your left."

          1. imaginarynumber

            Re: OK Google, what's the closing time of nearest supermarket?

            I once asked an American waitress for "another beer please" and was given an empty plate...

        3. macjules

          Well, both iOS 10.2 and OSX Sierra have made remarkable improvements to Siri. It clearly recognises every word that I say and does actually work, which is something I gave up on a Mac some time ago.

          "what's the closing time of nearest supermarket?"

          Siri "I have found x number of supermarkets close to your location please select one" and then "this supermarket closes today at XX:XX"

      1. Richard Jones 1

        @MachDiamond

        I completely agree, I have user specific voice control for required functions on my ten year old Nokia mobile. It is the one feature I need on the phone, however it is not entirely voice, a single physical contact on the headphone is also required to wake up the feature making for relatively secure user specific voice activation. What a shame modern phones cannot appear to do the same basic job. The modern items cost so much, do everything I do not want or need, yet cannot supply my one want making them useless for me.

      2. oiseau
        Unhappy

        Late in coming?

        "1984 is a little late in coming."

        I think not ...

        It's been here and all around us for quite a few years now.

        But we've been so distracted by all the hype and BS that when it arrived we didn't notice.

        And now it's too late.

    1. Ian Mason

      Anybody who watched Blake's 7 knows that voice activated computers ought to

      1) Confirm their activation word with a chime or a very irascible "yes?"

      2) Ask "Confirm?" after being given an order.

      Given that an 80's TV sci-fi scriptwriter can get it right, it's a little sad that Google, Amazon et al. can't quite manage to get there.

      1. herman

        The problem is that the kids who write today's software weren't even born in the 80s. All babies are born stupid and inexperienced.

      2. Chris King

        Blakes 7 and Microsoft

        Before they shut down Xbox Studio, there were plans for a new series...

        Zen: STATE COURSE AND SPEED

        Blake: Alpha Cygni, Standard by Four

        Zen: CONFzzzZZZzzzTtttt

        Avon: Zen's showing the Red Ring of Death again. Vila, it's your turn to call tech support.

        Vila: Why is it ALWAYS me ?

        Avon: Because you're the only one of us stupid enough to sound like they need tech support. Get dialling !

        1. Kiwi

          Re: Blakes 7 and Microsoft

          Avon: Because you're the only one of us stupid enough to sound like they need tech support. Get dialling !

          I think the movie "Starship: Rising" was at least set in the Blake universe, though much later than B7. IIRC it had a number of planet and other names similar to B7, though no overt references.

          IIRC it also appeared to be a pilot, or attempt at one..

          Villa wasn't anywhere near as stupid as he looked/acted. I recall one episode in S4 where he pretended to be drunk to get out of some messy job Avon and Tarrant(?) wanted to send him on

          BTW.. The S1 episode "Duel" and one episode soon after appear to use a smartphone, even simillar form factor. You see the device later next to the transporter controls, complete with what looks like a homescreen grid of icons on screen... Must take another watch of it...

          1. h4rm0ny

            Re: Blakes 7 and Microsoft

            Was it ever explicitly stated that Avon and Callie were involved together? There were hints and there was line of Villa's with "Did I miss something" and I think Callie or Jenna replied "yes, you missed something. which I thought was about Avon and Callie. I was too young to watch it when it came out, I think, but maybe they re-ran it. It might have been my first introduction to Sci-Fi.

            1. Kiwi

              Re: Blakes 7 and Microsoft

              Was it ever explicitly stated that Avon and Callie were involved together?

              I don't recall such.

              It would be well worth your time to watch it again I beleive. Some of the SFX are, well, low-budget 1980's BBC, but the plotlines and some of the other SFX are fairly decent.

              IIRC the BBC did release it on DVD, which promptly made its way to various online sources..

        2. Peter X

          Re: Blakes 7 and Microsoft

          +1! I vote Chris King to write new Blakes 7 episodes!! :D

      3. TeeCee Gold badge

        I've said it before and I'll say it again.

        Back in the days of Windows Mobile, MS made a truly brilliant product[1] for it called Voice Command. One of its best features was that, after asking it to call someone for you, it would read back what it was going to do and wait for confirmation to proceed. It's voice recognition and handling of dialects and foreign words / names was excellent too.

        I'm continually amazed that while MS could apparently get it right on a sclerotic ARM core with sod-all memory, the likes of Amazon, Google (and MS - hah!) still can't while using powerful servers to do the job.

        [1] Which, like all the best things to come out of Redmond, they then completely forgot to tell anyone about.

        1. heyrick Silver badge

          "I'm continually amazed that while MS could apparently get it right on a sclerotic ARM core with sod-all memory,"

          My Motorola Defy from years back had voice control. Only worked with Bluetooth but it could do a number of things and was quite accurate. All within the phone, all about as powerful as the original Pi.

          My Samsung has loads more memory, loads more cores, loads more megahertz, and a voice assistant that can work any time. But I refuse to use it as it is utterly incapable of doing anything for itself. The first use requires you to agree to a bunch of T&C for having your voice data processed by Nuance. Why? Oh, I can understand if you ask "when is the next train from Paddington with first class carriages?" then it might need to do some work; but why can't it so "what's the time" or "call [name]" for itself?

          Seems like we're going backwards - perhaps because data grabbing and profiling is the more important thing these days?

          1. Kiwi
            Thumb Up

            Seems like we're going backwards - perhaps because data grabbing and profiling is the more important thing these days?

            El Reg, we could use another icon for posts like these. One with a hammer and a nail in it should do the trick quite nicely, for "heyrick" hit the nail right on the heard.

        2. Kiwi
          Thumb Up

          I'm continually amazed that while MS could apparently get it right on a sclerotic ARM core with sod-all memory, the likes of Amazon, Google (and MS - hah!) still can't while using powerful servers to do the job.

          I see things the same. I've seen all sorts of small devices with reasonable Voice Reg over the years, and apple marketed "a computer that understands you" back in the 90's. But the more powerful systems get, the less usable VR seems to get. They also seem to get more stupid in many cases.

          1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

            "But the more powerful systems get, the less usable VR seems to get. They also seem to get more stupid in many cases."

            I think that's primarily because they've switched from recognising a few specific commands to attempting to recognise entire "natural language" sentences with little to no word gaps. It's a massive leap in complexity but is being treated like it's just a step upgrade. My Garmin SatNav recognises pretty much all of the spoken commands I give it apart from the word "up" when navigating a list. (A US style nasel "app" sound seems to work about 75% of the time) but often has some difficulty if I try to set a destination by speaking the address. It works a little better if I speak with distinct gaps between the words but does seem to have a few americanisms left in it. For examples, here in the UK we would normally give an address as One Eight Six Acacia Avenue, Anytown but the Garmin seems to prefer One Hundred Eighty SIx, Acacia Avenue, Anytown. Note the missing "and" between 100 and 80 that a Brit would normally use.

            Likewise, the text to speech seems to use the US style of "I don't know that word so follow these pronunciation rules for a best guess" rather than the UK rules you'd expect of a product marketed in the UK.

            I've not heard it say "wor-sester-shire" yet but Campbell comes out as Camp-Bell.

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          @TeeCee: nobody at Microsoft would willingly release a product they couldn't keep selling updates for, which is why what has emerged from them has been at best mediocre me-too stuff.

          The subscription model is even less likely to make them invest in new ideas - after all, they now get your money, automatically.

      4. Roland6 Silver badge

        Re: Given that an 80's TV sci-fi scriptwriter can get it right, it's a little sad that Google, Amazon et al. can't quite manage to get there.

        From my experience that is because companies don't use radio scriptwriters to design the voice dialogue interface. This was a lesson that I thought had been learnt back in 2000....

      5. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        You are making a silly assumption. Amazon want you to spend money, the whole point of these systems is to make that easier. Just like one-click purchases years ago, they want to make impulse purchases more likely. No, the system is not going to ask for confirmation before sucking money out if your account and into Amazon's.

        1. dajames

          Amazon want you to spend money, the whole point of these systems is to make that easier. Just like one-click purchases years ago, they want to make impulse purchases more likely.

          That's no reason not to get the system to read back what's being ordered and ask for confirmation. The confirmation would still be in the "impulse" time-frame so those "hey, that's neat!" purchases would still go through, and only the genuine mistakes would be stopped.

          Amazon can't really want to bear the cost of handling the returns of all the good ordered by mistake, can they?

        2. Ken Hagan Gold badge

          Making impulse purchases more likely = good.

          Making chargebacks and lawsuits more likely = less good.

          Losing their PCI compliance = much less good.

          The complaint here is not that Alexa makes it easy for you to spend money. It is that Alexa makes it easy for someone else to spend your money. That's not actually legal and if it becomes a running joke that Alexa fails in this way then eventually Amazon are going to lose in court. I don't know what the PCI rules are, but I would hope that creating a system where anyone within earshot of Alexa can use your credit card is in breach of those rules and presumably Amazon becomes a lot less profitable if they have to start using PayPal to process payments (because their own system is no longer allowed to operate).

      6. Antron Argaiv Silver badge
        Thumb Up

        When they make more money off you without requesting confirmation and by enabling voice ordering by default, guess what happens?

        1. d3vy

          " When they make more money off you without requesting confirmation and by enabling voice ordering by default, guess what happens?"

          Utter bollocks, it will increase the number of returns that they will get which will cost more than the interest they will get from having the money in their account for the few days until they have to refund it - I suppose there might be people who cant be bothered returning the items - generally I would expect this to only be low value items delivered to people with quite a bit of disposable income for whom taking the time to return the item would be a waste of their time.

          Maybe in countries with crap consumer laws... but in the UK at least they would be obliged to accept the return within 14 days.

          It does seem like alexa should say "I am ordering XXX, please confirm?" It could possibly also pop up an alert on the account holders phone to alert them and give them the opportunity to cancel the order.

        2. Alan Brown Silver badge

          > When they make more money off you without requesting confirmation and by enabling voice ordering by default, guess what happens?

          Distance selling legislation for starters.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Distance selling legislation for starters.

            Yes, at the moment.

            Bonfire of the red tape is on the way once the EU's not there to look after UK consumer interests.

      7. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "Given that an 80's TV sci-fi scriptwriter can get it right"

        They didn't have the biggest reseller of the planet telling them how a computer system should sell, ehm, work...

        1. Alan Brown Silver badge

          Re: "Given that an 80's TV sci-fi scriptwriter can get it right"

          > They didn't have the biggest reseller of the planet telling them how a computer system should sell, ehm, work...

          I used to think that Sirius Cybernetics Corporation was a description of MS, but these days it's clear that all of them want us to stick our heads in a pig.

          1. Fred Dibnah

            Re: "Given that an 80's TV sci-fi scriptwriter can get it right"

            David Cameron must have mis-heard them.

      8. Anonymous Coward
        Headmaster

        Ahem: Blakes 7 fanboi here.

        Zen *never* asked "confirm".

        Zen said "Confirmed" when given an order. It *never* asked for confirmation.

      9. Jon B

        It still wouldn't past the toddler test

        Anybody who watched Blake's 7 knows that voice activated computers ought to

        1) Confirm their activation word with a chime or a very irascible "yes?"

        2) Ask "Confirm?" after being given an order.

        Given that an 80's TV sci-fi scriptwriter can get it right, it's a little sad that Google, Amazon et al. can't quite manage to get there.

        To which said toddler replies 'yes'

      10. Terry 6 Silver badge

        @Ian Mason

        But then again, there's HAL.

    2. Kiwi

      Voice is a stupid idea.

      Not all of us are able-bodied. While I agree that most people don't need voice, for those with missing/disabled limbs this sort of thing can be quite helpful.

      Of course, they've probably had some decent voice-operation software on their computer for a long time.

      Agree with the rest though.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      On Android the OK Google by default is always enabled when on the home screen with screen on *or* if charging. As I charge mine overnight next to my clock radio I realzied this when occasionally during the Today program the phone would suddenly exclaim "I didn't get that question, can you repeat it" (or words to that effect) ... I then went to find out why iot was doing this and found the control that is now disabled.

      (Was amused to see this scenario being used in last week's Sherlock!)

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Joke

      All we need is a little communicator carried on the chest which you can activate by touching it...

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Terminator

      We need a project...

      Call it "Icarus", for obvious reasons, and just give the AI access to everything (within reason, give it a mouse and keyboard and it has to move them mechanically, so as to limit it's input/output reasonably)...

      Teach it via imitation/reward etc. Our current systems must at least be able to give us an "interesting" result, though I assume it will go the way of every AI claim, and just turn out to be a learning algorithm...

    6. Leeroy
      Joke

      It worked in trek so it must be fine. ...

      Computer lower the light level 20% and play some some music. ... no not that, Vash is coming for dinner.... ahhh that's better.

    7. veti Silver badge

      VoiceLaziness is a stupid idea.

      Fixed that for you.

      The problem isn't the means of communication, it's the bypassing important steps like "reviewing the results" and "verifying your credit card information".

      If your computer is set up so that it can spend your money without you being there, then you have a problem far larger than voice activation.

    8. Infernoz Bronze badge
      Devil

      Using any internet remote (cloud) server voice recognition is really stupid because it is a corporate spy and is ridiculously insecure if it does not have unique confirmation phrases to stop unauthorised actions e.g. by children, visitors, and broadcast/recorded audio.

      I have disabled voice recognition on Android and Windows 10 because I regard it as a dangerous attack surface!

    9. MrXavia

      Not that worried about the always listening part myself in terms of being hacked....

      Since a mobile phone/laptop could easily be hijacked and used for the same purpose

      I would like any digital assistant to be based on my own servers though, prefably at home, behind a firewall....

  1. Herby
    Joke

    All we need now is...

    "Alexa, please self destruct"

    I suspect that others will have other things that Alexa can't do (to itself) that humans can't do either.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Truckle The Uncivil

      Re: All we need now is...

      "Siri, go to sleep" works

    3. PM.
      Terminator

      Re: All we need now is...

      "Sorry, I can't do that , Dave"

  2. kyza

    Can't believe the writer forgot the Great Furby Radio Massacre when a DJ asked kids to put their Furbies to the radio to talk to each other and they all died.

    1. d3vy

      Yeah, but wasn't that actually bollocks in the end? Given that furbies use IR to communicate it seems unlikley that this really happened.

      I accept that the newer ones use bluetooth - but that still doesnt explain why proximity to a radio would kill them.

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        "but that still doesnt explain why proximity to a radio would kill them."

        It's a radio. And it's on, ie "active". Join the dots! Call a lawyer. Profit!

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