Trust HOMEr

 Originally published on November 25, 2019 by Patrick Gebhardt
Last updated on March 03, 2022 • 3 minute read

It's not really surprising that smart speakers can be a gateway into your own four walls, exploited by people who don't really belong there. We tried to find a solution for this on Maker Monday.

Recently, the folks at The Verge showed, based on recent reports, that even people who don't work for Google have access to Google Assistant voice recordings: Contractors who get paid to transcribe audio clips collected by Google’s AI assistant sometimes end up listening to the most sensitive information about users. In Maker Monday, we previously addressed the topic of facial recognition and were curious to see whether the voice activation of a home speaker device would be complicated to design.

As it turns out, it is. Or to conclude with a Homer quote: Trying is the first step towards failure!

 

 

Maybe you can help us out? If you have done something similar to what we tried here, or if you know how to design a better solution than we did, let us know in the comments! We'd love to make this project successful!