We have seen stories about how Alexa has done some weird things for people - and sometimes the stories people give can be difficult to believe.
I found this news story interesting, because it talks about how this can happen.
Apparently, just watching tv can have words or word combinations set off your device, and sometimes words that should not set it off does…
I had a problem with my boss, sitting in the next office talking on the phone, not overly loud, so that I couldn’t understand what he was saying, just the ocassional word. He’d be talking away and saying “ok, ok. Ja, ok” and Google Assistant would trigger constantly.
I leave my phone on my desk when I’m out and about in the office. After a month, I checked my Google recordings, there were about 50 activations recorded, yet I hadn’t used Google Assistant once during that time! around 40 were my boss saying “ok, ok” and another 10 were strong wind triggering the assistant when I was out walking the dog!
As I don’t use the assistant, I’ve completely disabled the app on the phone - it is deactivated and doesn’t have permission to use the microphone, internet or storage etc.
I haven’t had any accidental activations of my Google Nest Mini yet.
I find it funny when I’m watching something on my iPad and it triggers Siri…
I had to change my trigger word for Alexa to Echo as it seems my granddaughter’s name Ayla was just too close to Alexa! No problems since. It’s rarely triggered and I haven’t identified any words that have triggered it when it does happen…maybe once a month or less.
I’ve never had any TV show (or podcast) set off Siri or Alexa. Even when I had Alexa sitting directly under the TV in my office at TWiT, it never got set off…other than by Padre coming in to the office and adding weird things to the shopping cart. (I didn’t hook it up to my actual Amazon account for that reason. No surprise purchases!)
My loud yawns must sound like computer because that’s alexa’s wake word and it always wakes up.
While listening to this week’s SN on my Google home at the weekend, Steve’s ‘yo Leo’ response to Leo’s intro set off the assistant on the same device I was listening on.
That sounds like a basic failure in the design of the software, when the device can respond to itself!
Yeah it was strange. There was other noise in the room at the time so it must have confused it.
I was talking about a new holster with my girlfriend this morning (we were both in the room, I wasn’t even touching the phone). All of a sudden, my phone’s screen popped up white, and the phone (that was sitting on the table) told me that it had the results of my requested search. I looked - it was “the impeachment of Donald Trump.”
I never said Google or anything like that. And then THAT is the results of some sort of “accidental” search.
And I’m supposed to think this is random?
Get out the tin foil! It’s a conspiracy! 
I had some weird search result on Alexa once…I can’t really remember what we were talking about when Alexa told me she couldn’t find any results for “catfish walking”. Huh? I have no clue what I said that sounded like a request for THAT. I should have looked into the history to see what it thought I said but forgot…it was amusing, if nothing else.
