Can you imagine a device recording everything it hears in your home, and then sending those recordings to Google for analysis? Kind of a scary thought, isn’t it? Well, apparently, that's exactly what columnist Artem Russakovskii of Android Police experienced when his Google Home Mini recorded everything in his home "24/7."
Introducing Google Home Mini
For the uninitiated, Google Home Mini is another one of those voice-activated digital assistants. How it works is that it responds to "hotwords" predefined by the user.
Upon hearing the hotword, the Mini will wake up and record what the user says.
It will then send the recording to Google servers and if all goes well, the Mini will return the results of the user's query.
So, the Home Mini seems easy enough to use, right? It's in line with Google's ethos of simplicity and efficiency.
But when devices like these go wrong, the results can be disastrous. Russakovskii's problems arose because it was later found out that there is actually another way to wake up the Mini other than the hotword - and this method is faulty.
Actually, there is a soft touch portion on the device that, when pressed, records what the user is saying. This is a good alternative for when the device fails to recognize the hotwords even when you're already shouting them in frustration.
However, in the Russakovskii's case, the soft touch on his Google Home Mini was a little too sensitive. The device thought that someone was holding down the top part indefinitely, so it was active all the while and recording everything!
It helps that the Google Home Mini has a light indicator that shows when it's active and vice versa.
But it's really hard to notice things like that unless you're one of those people who have time to check the state of their gadgets from time to time.
Update to fix bugs
The problem was eventually discovered after some time, and props to Google for being quick on the uptake. According to a report by The Verge, the company has already issued an update.
They also promised that this bug will no longer exist on the later versions of the Mini.
It's not Hard To Imagine the many ways devices like Google Home Mini could go wrong. Russakovskii himself listed some, like when the device hears something that sounds like the hotword, but is actually something else. Or when he listens to a podcast or TV program and the Mini interprets some spoken words as hotwords.
Of course, those are minor inconveniences compared to the Mini's functionality. It's a new product, so it's not hard to imagine Google fixing these flaws to get this device closer to perfection.
