AI is taking over our homes – should we be worried?

Artificial intelligence is steadily taking over your home, but is big brother (or sister) listening to you?

“The error rate on voice recognition has fallen to just 5 per cent – which is on a par with humans”

The concept of the automated home is nothing new – it has been the stuff of futuristic films and glossy magazines for many years, but now it’s getting closer to becoming an affordable reality for the many, not just the few.

As the likes of Facebook, Google and Amazon dig ever deeper into our lives and habits, it’s hardly surprising that the tech giants now see the home as the next big battleground. The Internet of Things (IOT) sees everything from your TV, fridge and washing machine to your heating and lighting being permanently connected to the internet.

At the heart of this vision is voice control. No longer will you have to press a button or open an app to activate your home devices. Of course, the technology itself is still being developed. Apple’s Siri has been with us for a while, Google voice search is omnipresent and it wasn’t so long ago that we were barking orders at Samsung TVS through the built-in microphone (albeit with somewhat mixed results).

Yet the technology has come a long way in the past few years. Early in-car voice control systems were pretty rubbish, but now the advent of Siri, Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant have taken things to a whole new level. Talking to our gadgets has become more normal and, with Alexa, Amazon has given its AI assistant a more human personality.

Over the past month, we’ve been using both Amazon Echo and Google Home extensively, and it’s been surprising how quickly you get used to walking into the house and just saying out loud “Alexa, turn the lights on” or “Okay Google, play Lady Gaga on Spotify”. Quite what the neighbours will think, who knows? But it’s undeniably handy not to have to pull out your phone or tablet to fire up the relevant app.

Voice recognition

What sets the latest voice-control tech apart from its predecessors is the fact that it is getting much better at learning your voice and adapting to the questions you ask. In the past, early systems often required you to use a specific form of words in a precise order. Newer systems such as Alexa are much more flexible, being programmed to understand many different commands and learn your voice patterns.

Recent research by Gfk shows how far things have come. In 1994, the error rate on voice recognition systems was nearly 100 per cent, by 2013 that was down to 23 per cent, and in 2017 it has fallen to just 5 per cent – which is on a par with humans.

At the CES 2017 show in Las Vegas in January, around 1000 companies announced plans to integrate Amazon Alexa into their products, which gives you a sense of how rapidly voice control is taking hold. One of those companies was Sonos, which is working on full integration of Alexa to launch later this year.

Google, meanwhile, is playing catch-up. Its Google Home voice-controlled speaker launched in the UK in April (see First Test, page

20). Both it and Amazon’s Echo offer a similar proposition: voice control not only of your music playback, but also a host of other smart home devices such as Philips Hue lighting, Nest thermostats and Samsung Smartthings.

What this means in practice is that you can have a single device in your home to control the heating, lighting, music, TV and so on.

It’s all in the skills

Our experience of Amazon Alexa and Google Home has thrown up some interesting results. Neither is perfect, and both will sometimes struggle to carry out your wishes. “Sorry, I can’t help you with that” or “I didn’t understand the question” crops up from time to time. Accents can throw them too. A French relative, who speaks excellent English but with an accent, managed to confuse Alexa on a few occasions.

Where Amazon currently has a lead over Google is in the sheer number of apps (or ‘skills’ as Amazon calls them) that are compatible with Alexa. Some of the ones we use most regularly are National Rail, which will give you real-time

updates for train journeys, Uber for ordering a cab, Hive for adjusting the central heating, Philips Hue for operating the lights around the house, and EDF Energy for checking utility bills.

At the time of writing, Google Home in the UK does not support National Rail, Uber, Hive or EDF Energy – and even more annoyingly, it won’t sync with corporate Google calendar accounts (only personal ones), which Amazon will. Over time Google may well catch up, but right now, in our experience, Amazon has the lead on apps.

Multi-room control

However, Google has a big advantage over Amazon when it comes to home entertainment. While you can have a number of Amazon Echos dotted around the house, you can’t group them together to make a true multi-room system, nor can you link two Echos together to create a stereo pair.

Google Home can do both those things, and will also connect wirelessly with any Chromecast devices you have in your home network. So if you want to ‘cast’, say, a Netflix programme from your tablet to your Chromecast-enabled TV, you can just ask Google Home to do so and it will oblige.

But back to voice control. When controlling a multi-speaker system, we found Google Home has a few foibles. Set up a stereo pair in one room, for example, and ask them to play some classical music from Spotify, then each speaker will start playing a different piece of music. To get them to sync together properly, we had to select the grouped pair through an app such as Spotify Connect.

And if you have a multi-room system, it will respond only to the speaker you are nearest to at the time. So if you want them all to play the same music throughout the house, again you’ll have to go through the relevant control app.

Still, we’ve come a long way in just a few years. Sonos’s integration of Alexa could prove another turning point, with true multi-room control via voice. And given that you can buy the smaller Amazon Echo Dot for just £50, and add that to any existing audio system, voice control is no longer expensive or the stuff of science fiction.

Privacy concerns

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of all this is the fact that these devices are always on (unless the mute button is activated), so there are privacy concerns regarding exactly what Amazon and Google are hearing in your home, and the data they are collecting. We experienced Alexa suddenly bursting into life and saying something when we hadn’t asked her a question, which can be disconcerting. And yes, all those questions you ask will get logged on Amazon’s and Google’s servers so they can build up a picture of what you’re up to.

And then there was the issue of the CIA and MI5 allegedly hacking Samsung smart TVS so their built-in microphones could record what you were saying without your knowledge, as revealed by Wikileaks. Great for the spooks, not so good for us.

Is that something you feel comfortable with for the added convenience voice control brings to your home? That’s for you to decide. Le in the dark

There is one other issue you need to bear in mind. All these systems need a really robust wi-fi connection. At the time of writing, our smart home had 19 devices connected to the internet. So if the wi-fi goes down, then suddenly we’re grappling around for good old-fashioned switches to turn the lights on, adjust the heating or activate the music system. How very old school.

TOP 5 Turn the page for our selection of the top five highlights from the Munich High End Show… (see p28)

“All the questions you ask are logged, so Amazon and Google can build up a picture of what you’re up to”