Technology

Posted on October 4, 2016 by staff

TALKING POINT: Is voice recognition tech too creepy?

Technology

Google has unveiled its Home ‘smart speaker’.

Google Home is a direct competitor to Amazon’s Echo, which has just gone on sale for £149.99 in the UK.

People can verbally request that Alexa, the ‘digital assistant’ inside the Echo, plays specific music from Spotify, reads news headlines, turns on the lights, orders pizza from Domino’s or a taxi from Uber.

And, most pertinently for Amazon, they can buy products from the online retail giant.

The Echo has sold 3.5 million units in the United States since 2014 but Amazon has only just configured the device to respond to British accents.

Google Home will also connect to your home’s Wi-Fi, but the endgame is slightly different: the search giant is likely more interested in syncing into the calendar of events from your Google accounts to assist your everyday planning.

The success of the Echo has prompted debate over who might be listening in via a ‘smart speaker’ microphone that is never turned off.

As we increasingly turn to Google Now on our Android smartphones and Siri on Apple devices, are we now comfortable with voice recognition tech?

Or is this a step closer to Nineteen Eighty-Four?