Which is exactly what happened today during CW6 in the morning when Jim Patton and Lynda Martin were talking about a child who accidentally bought a dollhouse and four pounds of cookies
“I love the little girl, saying ‘Alexa ordered me a dollhouse,’” said Patton.
As soon as Patton said that, viewers all over San Diego started complaining their echo devices had tried to order doll houses. It’s a common problem experts say can be avoided.
Idiots.
Before copy makes it on-air, there are multiple people who vet this content. I was eating dinner while Heather’s dad was watching Fox News who recounted the story of the dollhouse (not the fallout) and they made the same mistake. A day or two before, they had this video on Fox News as well – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_ybdT6JzNg
In both cases, the Echo device woke up and started listening.
I always default to how John Gruber’s Talk Show podcast handles it. You say “Hey Dingus” instead of the whatever the device is named. When you’re talking about Siri, Alexa, Google or Cortana, just substitute Dingus. It works great. These devices are always listening. Be careful what you say.