
Yes, Amazon Echo Is an Ad Machine - ourmandave
https://gizmodo.com/yes-your-amazon-echo-is-an-ad-machine-1821712916
======
jdietrich
If you're concerned about the future of voice assistant technology, I'd
encourage you to contribute to Free voice assistant projects like Jasper or
Mycroft. With enough support, locally-hosted Free voice assistants could be a
credible alternative to cloud-based proprietary products.

[https://jasperproject.github.io/](https://jasperproject.github.io/)

[https://github.com/MycroftAI/](https://github.com/MycroftAI/)

Lots of related projects could also use your help. You don't need to be an AI
genius - every FOSS project can benefit from help with debugging, cleaning up
code and writing documentation. Mozilla Open Voice just want you to read a few
sentences to help build their training corpus.

[https://voice.mozilla.org/](https://voice.mozilla.org/)

[https://github.com/mozilla/DeepSpeech](https://github.com/mozilla/DeepSpeech)

[https://opennlp.apache.org/](https://opennlp.apache.org/)

[http://www.nltk.org/](http://www.nltk.org/)

~~~
ConfucianNardin
It's unfortunate that there aren't any high quality projects for the other way
around - text to speech.

By high quality I mean something as good as Tacotron 2 [1]. However, I have no
illusions of Google ever releasing code or trained models.

Someone will likely re-implement it from the paper, but it's unlikely to be
anywhere near as good as those samples, due to worse tuning and lack of a good
training set[2].

This effect can be seen if you compare Baidu's samples [3] for Deep Voice 3
with those from an implementation by a third party [4].

[1]:
[https://google.github.io/tacotron/publications/tacotron2/ind...](https://google.github.io/tacotron/publications/tacotron2/index.html)

[2]: Common voice, for example, will not work well, since you want lots of
data from a single speaker for good results. See for example, how samples get
progressively worse when increasing the number of speakers in training
data[3].

[3]: [http://research.baidu.com/deep-voice-3-2000-speaker-
neural-t...](http://research.baidu.com/deep-voice-3-2000-speaker-neural-text-
speech/)

[4]:
[https://r9y9.github.io/deepvoice3_pytorch/](https://r9y9.github.io/deepvoice3_pytorch/)

~~~
jdietrich
I don't think it's an insurmountable challenge.

Tacotron 2 was trained on 24 hours of single-speaker transcribed audio, which
is comparable to the freely-available LJ Speech Dataset. We know that it's
feasible to train using unaligned transcribed speech, which broadens the
opportunities to reuse an existing corpus. (Aside: does anyone know the legal
status of training a DL model on copyrighted content?) Tacotron 2 was trained
on a 32 GPU cluster, which is large but not absurdly so; we are seeing drastic
performance increases in low-precision compute, which should hopefully start
to trickle down as Volta reaches the market.

Expertise is a bigger challenge at this stage, although that is progressively
changing. A huge number of developers are taking a serious interest in deep
learning, so hopefully we'll start to see more active contributors to DL FOSS
projects. The teams at DeepMind and Baidu Research are clearly highly skilled
but relatively small, which suggests that their efforts could be replicated by
a small but determined team of FOSS developers.

~~~
Danihan
>Aside: does anyone know the legal status of training a DL model on
copyrighted content?

How would anyone know that it happened?

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Not a legal opinion:

Seems like it would fit under Fair Use in USA but wouldn't be allowed under
UK's Fair Dealing; I can't comment on other jurisdictions.

------
tyfon
I'm surprised anyone wouldn't think so.

TVs are the same. And phones. And most web sites. And buses, walls, taxies,
public transportation stops, bridges over roads etc etc.

One has to work hard to defend against the ad onslaught these days.

~~~
Feniks
The whole POINT of Echo is to always listen and direct your consumer pattern
to Amazon and other approved affiliates.

To me it represents pure evil and I don't see how you could defend against it.
Except for not buying into this stupid shit.

~~~
deeth_starr_v
>> "always listen"

This is somewhat correct but misleading. It's always listening for the "wake
word" \-- alexa or echo -- and then it processes your request. But it's not
sending all conversations up to amazon. Just your alexa requests.

~~~
cantrip
Not yet at least. Once attitudes towards privacy change further towards
continual surveillance they'll be the first to flip the switch and turn it on.

~~~
rando444
Well currently they'd have to completely rebuild the hardware.

This person gave a very good explanation here:

[https://np.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/7m91u9/if_go...](https://np.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/comments/7m91u9/if_google_devices_only_start_listening_once_you/drsdxe1/)

~~~
pavlov
These devices will get replaced every few years anyway. Having to send out new
hardware to customers is absolutely no problem for Amazon.

~~~
woolvalley
Then by that point privacy as a selling point apple will have the homepod for
sale?

I have a bunch, and you only really use them for about 5 things, with the most
useful thing being music.

------
BrandiATMuhkuh
During my PhD I ran simulations and experiments with robots + humans to
explore the effect and possibility of it. The scariest part is, a small amount
of companies might now be able to effect with just one update how a huge
amount of people think/behave. The reason why Alexa is more powerful than
normal advertisement is, people create a social connection to Alexa. Which is
needed for "trusted" influence like recommendations from a friend.

My thesis in case someone is interested:
[https://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/handle/10092/13598](https://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/handle/10092/13598)

~~~
whateveruser
If we've learned anything about advertisers in the past, is they WILL get
greedy, and start exploiting human brain in more and more ways. Eventually it
reaches uncanny valley, and more and more people start noticing how messed up
and over the top advertising has gotten and find ways around them or to avoid
them, or in the end, neglect them.

Of course, this assumes people still 'own' their devices, at that..

~~~
BrandiATMuhkuh
Yes they will exploit it. But I think the real problem is, when you don't know
if what you see/hear is advertisement. Like seeing a news paper article which
is actually advertisement. Or a blogger who says a phone/shoes/etc. is the
best she/he every tried. While it's actually bought advertisement.

------
favicons
A website that makes 100+ requests of which 30 get blocked warns me about ads.
This is hilarious.

~~~
jermaustin1
The difference is that Gizmodo is "upfront" about it.

For amazon to say, "Use _____ to remove that stain," and allow my company to
put in a $0.35 per request bid to fill it in with "Jeremy's Awesome Cleaning
Sauce," seems inherently more wrong.

~~~
GunlogAlm
Is it? If it identifies itself as an advertisement, I see no distinction.

~~~
untog
But according to the article, it doesn't. In the example of buying toothpaste,
Alexa just says "I can search for a brand, like Colgate". It doesn't indicate
whether Colgate paid for that placement.

------
Digital-Citizen
Amazon Echo might be "an ad machine" but that article is a good example of
business-minded misdirection: using a relatively minor problem -- persistent
advertising -- to deflect attention away from a much greater problem --
persistent spying -- where businesses are the main beneficiaries of the
misdirection.

The real problem with Echo is that it's an always-on microphone connected to a
networked computer that runs proprietary software (see
[https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/](https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/) for how
proprietary software is often malware). Users have no software freedom to
inspect what the software on the Echo does, change the Echo's software to make
the Echo do something different, or share the Echo software (whether modified
or not) to help their community. Even if Echo's software comes with some form
of user controls, those controls are implemented with proprietary software,
software users cannot trust. No matter how technical and willing a user is to
improve their Echo device to meet their needs, the permission to do so is
purposefully missing. Amazon does not respect a user's software freedom.
Therefore there's no good reason to trust the Echo. For all we know Echo is
now or at some later time will relay whatever is within mic range to someplace
else, thus presenting a constant threat to one's privacy.

Nobody needs Echo; it does nothing users weren't perfectly fine to do another
way by visiting a website to place orders. But one should reconsider doing
business with Amazon at all (see
[https://stallman.org/amazon.html](https://stallman.org/amazon.html) for
details).

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I think there's a huge benefit to talking about the ad problem here. One of
the reasons it is hard for linking/quoting Stallman to actually get you
anywhere in discussion is that the Stallman view is one of absolute
philosophy. "This is philosophically wrong" is not something the average
consumer cares about, just like privacy invasion is a ghost nobody cares about
until they _see its effects_. Things like convenience and things being free
are very visible, noticeable traits, and the counter to those arguments need
to also be visible.

Advertising is a very _visible_ effect of both privacy-invasive systems and
proprietary software. People _care_ about how ads affect them because they can
see it.

~~~
Digital-Citizen
I've found that linking to Stallman's articles tends to promote discussion
wherein those who object to his articles don't provide specifics against his
arguments to back up their own objections. Those pages are loaded with
specific consequences; if you haven't spent time reading them you should.

Also, the case of what the "average consumer cares about" (almost invariably
an evidenceless case which serves to benefit a business) is often pitched but
always shown to be wrong. As Glenn Greenwald points out very clearly in
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOksJKfapVM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOksJKfapVM)
(around 28m30s) he has challenged the notion that privacy is vague or somehow
unimportant, or that anyone doesn't care. In fact, he demonstrates how people
who say something like what you assert, "They don't actually mean it. At all.
And the proof of it is they do all sorts of things to safeguard their own
privacy; I mean we all have things to hide. There are things that everyone in
this room would be willing to have their spouse or their best friend or their
physician or their lawyer or their psychiatrist know but would be mortified to
have anyone else know. The people who say they don't value privacy, they put
and use locks on their bedroom and bathroom door, they put passwords on their
email and social media accounts, they do all sorts of things there's a place
they can go in the world to think and reason and explore without the
judgmental eyes of other people being cast upon them. This is really critical
to human freedom.".

Greenwald challenges people who pitch a line quite comparable to what you said
to take him up on his offer to divulge all of one's credentials to everything
they have (no exceptions, all accounts should be included) by emailing them to
an account he maintains. He asks them for this info and tells them explicitly,
"I just want to be able to troll through what you're doing online and publish
under your name...". A perfectly reasonable request for anyone who wants to
insist people don't care about privacy. The results of his request: "To this
day, not a single person has taken me up on this offer.". That whole talk is
worth hearing and reflecting on.

People do value their own privacy even if they hold immature evaluations of
the importance of privacy or don't know enough about how computers work to
think through the consequences of their tech-related choices. People need to
learn about the cost of "things being free" and hold mature discussions of
important issues of our day which certainly include how everyday technology
affects one's privacy (and the privacy of anyone who goes to their house
within range of that Echo always-on mic; it's not just about your choice for
yourself in your home). People need to learn about the inherent value of
privacy as well as the notion that some degree of privacy is not easily
regained when lost, so one should not trade privacy away for convenience (not
that I agree with you that Amazon Echo is convenient; even on its own merits
it has already failed to distinguish between its owner and people on TV
demonstrating the device causing lots of unwanted orders. This clear exposure
of a security problem is hardly convenient). We do that work, in part, with
discussions like these, not by downplaying the importance of privacy but by
teaching people the very practical outcomes you inchoately chastise Stallman
for presenting.

------
hawski
Mozilla recently released open source speech recognition model [1]. What
minimal and reasonably cheap device could be used to run it? There could be or
already is an open source project that could replace devices like Echo.

[1] [https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/11/29/announcing-the-
init...](https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/11/29/announcing-the-initial-
release-of-mozillas-open-source-speech-recognition-model-and-voice-dataset/)

~~~
jabujabu
I imagine something similar to an Echo could be thrown together on a raspberry
pi or something similar.

~~~
deeth_starr_v
Kinda. The issue is the microphone. It's a specialized piece of hardware that
uses a microphone array and also has wake word logic built in. There are only
a couple companies that sell this and they don't sell one offs. But maybe in
the future.

~~~
Vendan
Wake word logic is not the hard part, you can do it in software relatively
cheaply (cmusphinx/pocketsphinx handles wake word type logic in realtime with
relatively low cpu requirements) Microphone quality is an issue, but there's
stuff out there, it's just a matter of finding a good one. One popular one is
the playstation eye camera, as it's really freaking cheap and is designed for
speech input at medium distances, but it's not omnidirectional like the
echo/google home mini kind of thing is.

------
ocdtrekkie
Starting with my pet peeves with home automation software... I started writing
my own. Then it became the start of an assistant. Now I also run it in my car
(I'm implementing navigation, and reading about CAN interfaces). The one
thing, hilariously, not implemented yet, is voice recognition, but the whole
system's designed to account for it. I'm hoping some of the open source
projects for voice like Mozilla's will lead to something I feel comfortable
implementing here.

I personally strongly recommend people look to put the "personal" back in
personal assistant. Build something that does what you need it to, you'd be
surprised how easy it can be, and how educational doing it is. I've learned a
ton of stuff I didn't know just implementing basic features.

~~~
noxecanexx
Any idea where to start

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I started with a code sample of ten or so lines of Visual Basic .NET code that
could allegedly turn on my Insteon light switch. Then I made it control my
other Insteon devices. Then I started adding email notifications. Then I
figured out a command line interface made it easy for me to add new
commands/features quickly and that I could also then pipe things like input
from an app or voice to that interface.

It kind of grew organically. I don't think when I started if I planned to
build what I've put together so far, I would have ever started, because it
sounds daunting, especially given my level of experience when I started.

Do one thing. Then do something else. :)

As a sidebar, if you want the general knowledge type queries, Wolfram Alpha's
API is incredible for this. They have a "spoken" API which presents the result
of your query as a single text-string, ready to be output to a text-to-speech
client. I think adding the ability to use Wolfram Alpha was all of a couple
lines of code tops to my existing project. And of course, it's free for way
more queries a month than you'd ever run on a personal use project.

~~~
noxecanexx
Thanks. I might start with simplifying my dev workflow, the perhaps some
appliances

------
Someone1234
Amazon may want to tread carefully here.

Previously their business model was simply to create a fast-lane into Amazon
ordering (e.g. "Alexa order me some toilet paper"), but if what the article
says is true they're going to ruin normal searching by only giving you product
results (Q: "alexa how do I remove a wine stain?" A: "buy Dr. Bubbles Super
cleaner"). If Echo is going to give me bad results for questions I'd just stop
using it for that.

I'll use whatever personal assistant gives me the highest quality results. If
your business model inherently degrades the quality, then your business model
is self-destructive.

~~~
have_faith
I don't think their strategy of sell em cheap and get a echo into every home
will actually save them here as the barrier to switching to a competitor is
very low. Coupled with the fact that I get the impression that no one uses
their echo for anything other than asking about the weather.

~~~
jermaustin1
That and you can have multiple timers running. When cooking I use that. When
leaving the house, I ask the weather for the day. When planning a weekend
trip, I get the weather a for the weekend at where ever.

------
toyg
When rich people had manservants, it wouldn't be uncommon for them to
discreetly get a cut from vendors for recommending their services. Corporate-
provided electronic manservants will be no different: they will serve
themselves before they serve you.

Obviously the simplest solution is credible open-source alternatives; or there
is always that pesky thing, the legislative process.

------
_Codemonkeyism
Only relevant sentence in article

"Proctor & Gamble as well as Clorox are reportedly in talks for major
advertising deals that would allow Alexa to suggest products for you to buy."

------
morgante
This seems vastly overstated. I've never even bought something with my Alexa,
let alone heard an ad from it.

------
alyxhorace
Preface: I work for Mycroft, mentioned earlier in the thread. We're the open
source alternative to the Amazon Alexa and Google home. This makes us
customizable, privacy-minded, and neutral.

The thing with the current voice assistants is that they store every. single.
piece. of voice snippets they hear. Those recordings sit on their servers. At
the end of the day, these corporations have a purpose other than creating a
voice technology--they have very specific ways to pay the bills. Amazon is an
e-commerce platform. Google lives off AdWords. To think they won't utilize the
data they're collecting.. doesn't sound like a strategic decision they'd make.

For those looking for a voice assistant that represents them--and not the
corporation behind it, is Mycroft. A way to democratize voice and AI.

Nonetheless, we're in the process of making our second device and if you're
interested, you can get updates on it in the link below! We'd love for you to
join our community and help us create an open voice assistant. Head to
[https://mycroft.ai](https://mycroft.ai) :)

[https://mycroft.ai/kickstarter-
mark-2/?utm_source=ActiveCamp...](https://mycroft.ai/kickstarter-
mark-2/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Something+Big+is+Coming&utm_campaign=Teaser+Email+%231+%7C+Something+Big+is+Coming)

------
hallman76
With a 120 million Alexa devices in market of course big brands are trying to
figure out how to reach those audiences. If you're P&G and you're selling
products through Amazon of course you'd ask how your brand can better leverage
the Alexa platform. That doesn't mean Amazon is going to do anything about it.

IMO Amazon can't afford to squander their voice lead by tarnishing the Alexa
brand with poorly implemented ads.

------
Edmond
Amazon got me on their Kindle, which is also an Ad device...I posted a rant
about my experience years ago: [http://colabopad.blogspot.com/2013/12/do-not-
buy-amazon-kind...](http://colabopad.blogspot.com/2013/12/do-not-buy-amazon-
kindle-fire.html)

~~~
Splines
Their e-readers are great. I have a Paperwhite and leave it in airplane mode
and the ads stopped. I push content to it through Calibre.

------
bradleyjg
I bought one of these because it was on sale and seemed like it might be fun,
but since setting it up I’ve hardly ever used it. It’s voice recognition is
pretty amazing but I’m just much more likely to google on my phone or desktop
if I want to know something.

~~~
mustacheemperor
I've found the search on the Echo is so bad it's almost invariably a waste of
time since I end up taking my phone out and doing the search there anyway. But
as the world's most expensive and convenient egg timer and lightswitch, it's a
very helpful device. I can just tell alexa to set timers when I'm cooking,
holler at it to turn the lights off when I leave, etc.

------
bibinou
source: [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/02/amazon-alexa-is-opening-
up-t...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/02/amazon-alexa-is-opening-up-to-more-
sponsored-product-ads.html)

------
partycoder
If my Echo ever replies with an ad, it goes directly into the trash.

------
freeflight
There's a certain irony to Gizmodo now going "Don't buy this!" after having it
hyped as the "most innovative thing from Amazon" when it got released.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Well, the article probably isn't meant to convey opinion or information; it's
goal is to drive ad views. Any opinions you read in it are incidental, and
selected for maximum clicks.

------
biocomputation
I feel like it's a corporate surveillance device. Same goes for similar
products by different manufacturers.

~~~
taeric
Do you include your phone?

I'm torn in the thought. At face value, I can't but agree. However, I also
enable crash reporting in many applications. Have for years. Firefox gets
usage stats. At some point, I have to wonder why I trust one group of people
and not another. More, have the groups I trust changed out from under me?

~~~
noxToken
Sometimes you just believe that one company will do better with your
information than others. I think I can trust Google to keep my information
safe, but I know that they're going to datamine it to hell and back to get the
most ad revenue out of me. I think I can trust Mozilla with my FireFox usage
habits as well. I can't say the same for most other companies.

I also have a robot vacuum cleaner, but I don't connect it to my network. Too
much potential information can be gleaned from a floor plan and the obstacles
around the house. You'll never get me to install one of those telemetry
devices in the OBD port on my car for any company. I don't care how much money
it will save me on my phone or insurance plan.

Is it all rational? Of course not. My personal policy concerning my personal
data is a mish-mash of contradictions, because it's fatiguing to be on the
offensive 100% of the time. For example, getting a Nest thermostat is
something that I want, but I don't want it phoning home to cloud servers. It's
heating/cooling data about my house. That's probably some of the most
innocuous data you could have about someone, yet if it isn't self-hosted, I
don't want it. Yet Maps has tons of location data on me, Gmail holds my
emails, and I have plenty of conversations over Hangouts.

Contradictions all the way down.

~~~
KozmoNau7
I'm currently trying to cut Google, Facebook and the other gargantuan major
players out of my online life, and move to smaller, more specialized
providers. If nothing else, it gives me a bit of peace of mind that my online
assets are not all in one basket. If you're 100% Google, what are you going to
do if the big G decides to suspend your account? If all your social life is
though FB (or other big social network), what happens if they suspend your
account?

My FB usage is now scaled down to basically just an event RSVP service with a
few token page subscriptions for bands and venues. I've removed all photos and
videos, cleared out all profile information, set visibility on everything to
"just me" or "friends only", and I've untagged myself from everything I was
ever tagged in. Yes, I know FB is probably keeping a lot (all?) of that in
their archives for an indeterminate period of time, maybe the EU "right to be
forgotten" can help with that.

I've replaced Google search with Startpage and I've migrated my email,
calendar and contacts from GMail/GCalendar to a paid hosting/email provider,
with my own personal domain name.

My phone is still running stock Android 7, but I've significantly cut down the
amounts of apps installed, I much prefer to use web versions in Firefox with a
decent lineup of privacy-protecting and tracking-inhibiting extensions. Some
mobile web sites are really shitty about forcing their apps on you, but I'd
rather just do without them. Obviously on the desktop, Firefox with the
appropriate extensions is the browser of choice.

I refuse to get any "smart" devices, they're not welcome in my home. I'm
working on replacing my Chromecasts, if nothing else I'll just use my laptop
and an HDMI cable. For music in my kitchen/bathroom/basement, I've got a
decent BT speaker instead.

Kicking the Google/FB/whatever dependency is _hard_.

~~~
weavie
It makes you wonder how people managed to survive at all 20 years ago!

~~~
KozmoNau7
Probably with a lot less stress.

------
jasonmaydie
Back in the day when google was growing, there were similar alarms about
tracking and personalized ads. People didn't care, I doubt they would care
with devices like echo too.

~~~
nickjj
I think the difference here is you can 100% ignore ads on Google. At this
point my brain doesn't even see sponsored ads as I immediately look at the
first organic result.

If you consume your content through audio then you're forced into listening to
the ad / sponsored answer.

~~~
Spivak
> At this point my brain doesn't even see sponsored ads

"I'm not affected by ads" is just a lie we tell ourselves. Why aren't you just
blocking them? Around these parts it's basically digital hygiene.

~~~
nickjj
I do block them with ublock origin and have been for years.

For some unknown reason I thought adwords ads came through and I just happened
to subconsciously ignore them, but having just Googled for something now, I
see they are not even there.

Funny how the brain works.

