[4] The North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (NAACL) also identified a discrepancy between male and female voices.
In 2017, British security researcher Mark Barnes showed that pre-2017 Echos have exposed pins which allow for a compromised OS to be booted.
Things such as other members in the household, consumers on the phone and even Tv audio can be picked up by these speakers and stored for future use by companies.
While this distinction increases the privacy by limiting when the microphone is on, users felt that having to press a button first removed the convenience of voice interaction.
Some capabilities of smart speakers are but not limited to setting alarms, sending voice messages to other smart devices in the home, the ability to send messages for you, instant answers to basic questions for any subject such as mathematics, geography, history, science and literature, and the ability to create task lists that can pair with your phone to remind you later on.
For example, visitors to a home or office, or people in a publicly accessible area outside an open window, partial wall, or security fence, may be able to be heard by a speaker.
One team demonstrated the ability to stimulate the microphones of smart speakers and smartphones through a closed window, from another building across the street, using a laser.