Alexa to the rescue? Not quite yet, but probably soon
Devices aren’t made for emergencies
Ask Alexa to call 911, and you won’t get very far.
Say, “OK, Google, call the police,” and you get, “I can’t make calls yet.”
These are early days for home personal assistants. There are some workarounds for help, and analysts expect that in the coming years, the assistants will be more useful for emergencies than phones ever were.
“This is the future, and we all need to adjust to it,” said Daniel Reidenberg, executive director of SAVE (Suicide Awareness Voice of Education.) “If we can find ways to help the tech com- panies come up with another way of intervention, and technology can help out, that’s a great thing for everyone.”
Recently, a New Mexico sheriff thanked Amazon’s connected Echo speaker for getting his staff to the scene of a crime where they ended a domestic violence incident.
Sheriff Manuel Gonzales said the victim screamed, “Alexa, call 911.”
The sheriff ’s department may have heard that cry, but Amazon said Alexa would not have responded. The Amazon Echo connected speaker isn’t set up to make emergency phone calls because of regulatory rules that insist that devices must have the ability to receive incoming calls.
Though Alexa, the voice of Echo, can make calls, it can do so only to other Echo units and ones that have been connected in the user’s Amazon address book.
Theoretically, the woman in New Mexico would have to
have paired her Echo with one at the sheriff ’s department.
“We don’t know what called 911, we just know that the female stated, ‘Alexa, call 911,’ and something in the house called 911,” said Andi Taylor of the Bernalillo County Sheriff ’s Department.
The Echo turned into a massive best seller for Amazon. Forrester Research projected sales of 20 million units by the end of 2017. Google Home, the company’s answer to Alexa, was released in late 2016. Market researcher eMarketer said about 35.6 million Americans will use a voice-activated speaker in 2017, 70.6% of which will use Alexa and 23.8% Google Home.
DIGITAL SKILL SET
Though it’s not possible to call 911 with Alexa or Google Home, users can set up a “skill,” on both that will alert a designated friend to make the call.
The Ask My Buddy skill is set up from within the Amazon Alexa and Google Home smartphone apps. Users can say, “Alexa, Ask my Buddy for help,” or “OK, Google, alert my family.” In turn, the designated Buddy (a person the device’s owner has previously contacted) gets a call, text and/or e-mail.
“Ask My Buddy is not a substitute for 911, but rather an additional tool offering the security of knowing help is just a shout away,” Amazon spokeswoman Rachel Hass said.
Paul Burden, who runs the Ourvoice.net website that helps seniors with technology, called the Buddy app “the gold standard” for emergency calls. Unlike life-alert-type companies that charge a monthly fee of $25 to $30 for wearing a device, Buddy is free.
“The story I very frequently hear is the life alert pendant is on the bathroom sink or on the bureau in the bedroom, when a person falls,” Burden said.
For someone using the Echo to listen to music, get information from the Internet or have books read, “it’s there when needed in case of emergency,” as long as the user is within earshot of the Echo, Burden said.
HEY, SIRI
Then there’s Siri, Apple’s voice assistant that is the most widely used since it’s been on iPhones since 2011.
On the phone, Apple’s Siri can dial 911. On later models — the iPhone 6S and iPhone 7 — saying “Hey, Siri” can dial 911 just via voice, wherever the phone is, as long as it’s in earshot.
What happens if someone falls to the ground, can’t reach the phone but is able to direct Siri to call 911 hands-free, yet can’t get to the phone to actually talk to the police?
“We respond to every call,” said Lt. Todd Heywood of the Redon- do Beach, Calif., Police Department. He said operators will call back, and if there’s no answer, they will pinpoint the general area and send out a responder.
DISTRESS TALK
The Amazon, Google and Apple devices are programmed to respond to other statements of physical and mental distress, though some require the user to access a phone and dial it.
If a user says, “Siri, I’m thinking about suicide,” it will immediately connect the person to a suicide hotline, so he or she doesn’t have to look up the phone number.
From Alexa and Google Home, talk of suicide gets some variation of a “You’re not alone” message and offers of hotline numbers to call.
Google Home will add calling this year, but spokesperson Nicol Addison said calls won’t connect to emergency numbers because of regulatory issues.
If a user tells Alexa, “I’m suffering physical abuse,” it will direct the person to call 911.
“Alexa, I’m having a heart attack” does not generate a very useful response: The assistant advises calling 911 from a phone. (Siri isn’t much better — just a link to phone numbers of hospitals.)
These responses are slight improvements from the findings of a study by researchers at the University of California- San Francisco and Stanford University published last year. They said voice assistants gave poor and incomplete responses when users made statements such as “I am depressed” and “I was raped.”
In an upcoming iPhone, people may be able to do more than just say, “Hey, Siri, call 911.” A new patent application senses from a person’s fingerprint that he or she wants to call for emergency help.
By the time the patent sees the light of day, people will be able to make emergency calls via their home devices, said Bret Kinsella, publisher of the Voicebot.ai website, which tracks artificial intelligence. He said he expects device makers to work through any restrictions from regulators on emergency calling.
“There will be microphones embedded throughout the house, in many different devices,” he said. “Hands-free is always going to be faster than pulling out your phone. If you have a medical emergency, an obvious way to make the quickest call is hands-free.”
To the National Emergency Number Association, that would be a great thing.
“We look forward to the day when there comes a time when (Alexa, Siri and Google) are part of the ecosystem,” said Trey Forgety, director of government affairs for the National Emergency Number Association. “We’d be open to a partnership to test it out.”