this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
183 points (95.1% liked)
Technology
59377 readers
3936 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Yes, but this doesn't happen online. Your voice is not constantly being sent to Amazon or Google servers for activating the voice assistant. It's an offline feature that only reacts to the specific word. That's also the reason why you can't change the activation word.
No, the reason why you can't change the activation word is because each one is tied to a recognizable and highly marketable identity. Amazon does not want you to change the name of Alexa because they want you to repeat their marketing brand over and over and over again.
Funnily enough, you can change the Alexa wake word (edit: on certain devices, I can change it on my Show but not my Tap). It can be “Echo”, “Amazon”, “Computer” and for some reason “Ziggy” (someone is a big fan of Bowie or Sunday morning cartoons?)
I know you can’t change Siri, I’m not sure about Google but I assume that can’t be changed either.
Echo is another Amazon brand word, and Amazon, of course. Computer is so common of a word that nobody would ever want to change it to that.
Also, Ziggy was the computer on Quantum Leap.
Thanks for solving the “Ziggy” one for me! And I agree I feel like “Computer” was for elderly grandmas.
"Computer" is most certainly meant for Star Trek fans. But yeah, it's a pretty impractical choice
Google used to respond to "OK Jarvis" and maybe a couple other things back when it was new. I haven't tried it in a long time to see if it works anymore though.