Ask HN: Does your Amazon Echo talk to you without being asked?

That has definitely not happened to me, but I can't wait until a horror film decides to use a possessed Echo as a plot device.

Oh, sorry, that was me.

("Of course" it was silent at 4am?)

Yap, done it twice the past week while we were talking Greek.

Does the Alexa app have a recording of what triggered her?

The app used to be very good at displaying most, if not all, interactions with Alexa. I find now that sadly many interactions are now missing.

Oh, and there's also this: https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/7/16265906/ultrasound-hack-s...

Voice recognition systems can be activated without saying a word by sending commands at very high frequencies (ultrasound). It is because of the ability of microphones to detect these frequencies. This could be used for jokes when an assistant like Alexa will say something while nobody has heard anything. Or by hackers, for example, to unlock a phone.

https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/06/hackers-send-silent-comman...

Spitballing: Daylight Savings Time related, perhaps?

Yeah it definitely does sometimes. I use "echo" as the wake up word and it certainly has woken up on entirely unrelated words.

It happened to me a couple of times (not during the night) but when the room was totally silent.

Yes, although not when things are silent. Once every week or two the Echo misinterprets something as a command and breaks into our conversation with a seemingly out of nowhere response.

Sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's annoying. I can't recall ever having this issue with "Hey Siri" and I don't own a Google Home

No, ours doesn't do that, but it doesn't something equally stupid.

I think our ISP does upgrades and network changes in the middle of the night and sometimes our gateway is rebooted. For some reason, the Echo feels the need to loudly proclaim that it can't connect with the mothership even though it's 4 am and we've never once used it at that time.

It wakes us up with "HOLY SHIT I CAN'T SEE THE FUCKING INTERNET!1@!@!". Those aren't the exact words, but when you are startled awake at 4am that's what it sounds like.

I've never had this exact situation, but ours starts talking in response to unrelated things we've said, stuff on the tv, or even random sounds in the house (e.g. a book being dropped set it off once) several times a week. I've been getting tempted to unplug it.

No. Has never happened

Command words don't rull full analytics I would think. My command word "Computer" on my echo is triggered by unrelated words that in hindsight have the same inflections etc or high match %. A lot time while listening to music softly I it triggers and I hear it volume down. I can regular play with my dog and say things like get the ball or some such and get it to trigger.

This is slightly OT, but a great prank is to use the 'say' application on OS X (there is a ladies' voice option that sounds very similar to Alexa but the name evades me) and hook up the Alexa as a BT speaker.

You can also use a sleep before the say command so that you can be away from the computer and have deniability. I did this to my family last April Fool's Day and it was hilarious.

Or when someone on TV (I'm looking at you, https://twitch.tv/CohhCarnage) asks Alexa to play a song by Mudvayne as a gag.

It hasn't done that but the dot would constantly disconnect from the internet (and bluetooth speaker) and announce it. They should really add a "Do Not Disturb" time window.

I just had it happen to me. She all of a sudden started talking about a Halloween song that I had asked her to play weeks ago (she acted like she just finished playing the song).

I checked the app, and the last query was when I asked her the weather from earlier this morning.

Must be a bug in the latest update they pushed out.

Have you tried writing JeffB for an answer? I heard it works well...

Never had this done in a silent room. I have had it go off in the middle of a movie.

We had to disconnect the Google Home because it would go off in the middle of the night.

Currently own a Echo Dot and a Google Home.

Yeah that's a hot mic. I was going crazy and thought it was all the Tylenol I was taking for my pancreas lately - but no.

It sure can be a nifty device to live with, but sometimes I pull the damn plug out of the wall. My dwelling isn't exactly an ashram, but to hell if I'm living with that thing monitoring me around the clock.

Where you asleep at that time? Maybe you talk while you are asleep? Obviously, you can't know that until someone tells you.

Yes, this happens to me on an Echo Dot. The responses I've noticed don't seem to be replaying previous queries but rather completely unrelated queries to the people in our house or our location. It's like a classic "crossed wires" from the old telephone operator. I guess it happens once/twice a month.