Technology

So... if you own an inexpensive Alexa device, it just doesn't have the horsepower to process your requests on-device. Your basic $35 device is just a microphone and a wifi streamer (ok, it also handles buttons and fun LED light effects). The Alexa device SDK can run on a $5 ESP-32. That's how little it needs to work on-site.

Everything you say is getting sent to the cloud where it is NLP processed, parsed, then turned into command intents and matched against the devices and services you've installed. It does a match against the phrase 'slots' and returns results which are then turned into voice and played back on the speaker.

With the new LLM-based Alexa+ services, it's all on the cloud. Very little of the processing can happen on-device. If you want to use the service, don't be surprised the voice commands end up on the cloud. In most cases, it already was.

If you don't like it, look into Home Assistant. But last I checked, to keep everything local and not too laggy, you'll need a super beefy (expensive) local home server. Otherwise, it's shipping your audio bits out to the cloud as well. There's no free lunch.

Easy fix: don't buy this garbage to begin with. It's terrible for the environment, terrible for your privacy, of dubious value to begin with.

If every man is an onion, one of my deeper layers is crumudgeon. So take that into account when I say fuck all portable speakers. I'm so tired of hearing everyone's shitty noise. Just fucking everywhere. It takes one person feeling entitled to blast the shittiest music available to ruin everyone in a 500yd radius's day. If this is you, I hope you stub your toe on every coffee table, hit your head on every door jam, miss every bus.

Today: "...they will be deleted after Alexa processes your requests."

Some point in the not-so-distant future: "We are reaching out to let you know that your voice recordings will no longer be deleted. As we continue to expand Alexa's capabilities, we have decided to no longer support this feature."

I honestly have no idea why anyone who cares even 1% about their privacy would have ever bought one of these abominations in the first place. If I ever receive one as a gift I will burn it with fire.

Amazon employee with no piss breaks listening in on my echo:

"How many fucking cats does this guy have? Just chose one name and call it that!"

Edit: "I don't know Jeff, sell him a fucking dr seuss book or something the guys mental."

It's always been this way for the cheap speakers. They've no processing power on-board and need the cloud just to tell you the time.

Now they can hear me scream “shut the fuck up Alexa!!!!” every time she says “…by the way…” when I just want to know what time it is.

In the age of techno-fascism, the people willingly pay to install the listening devices into their own homes.

Only a fool would put an Amazon listening device in their home.

What happens if I buy one and start playing porn on my computer ?

Always listening AI. I always thought the future would be awesome but capitalism has figured out a way for it to not be that.

https://lemmy.world/c/homeassistant

The part that really gets me is that you have to opt out to not have everything you say saved. Bonkers that that isn't the default! There's no good user-based reason for this. Alexa doesn't remember shit for users, like any AI there's no recall feature. You can't say remember what I told you last night - give the address for that place, I was drunk and don't remember the name.

My family has one in most rooms of our house...ugh

Maybe I misread the actual text, but it sounds like the exact opposite, that it's going to auto-delete what you say.

I don't think Google home listens in.

Because I'd absolutely be disappeared by now if it did.