It’s also confusing to refer to an Amazon microphone because I am not sure what product are writing about. I think most people know that an echo has microphones and doesn’t read brainwaves.
There is even someone in the twitter thread pointing out that Amazon uses the word "microphone" in their copy, as if that is some sort of "gotcha".
No, Amazon isn't trying to pretend the Echo doesn't have a microphone – they just think it's misleading to refer to a smart speaker as an "Amazon microphone", and I happen to agree.
In the context of the original article, the ability to "speak" is completely irrelevant since it's the privacy risks that are being highlighted. I think "microphone" is a perfectly fine way to capture the essence of the entire Alexa product line in this regard.
That's kind of a technicality, the vast majority of non-mic'd speakers don't have all the required hardware or software to save or transmit audio to anything.
I thought that at some point smart meant self regulating, followed by TVs being "smart" by having apps and an always on network connection. Neither of these implied a microphone.
Everything I can think of which we've just slapped "smart" in front of in recent years is smart because it is more interactive / capable (in a technology centric way) than the corresponding "dumb" counterpart.
Smart speakers work great as dumb speakers and (generally) have the form factor you expect from dumb speakers. They are a lot more capable than the dumb ones due to a variety of additions, one of which is a microphone that allows it to respond to voice commands.
No, because that is redundant. The microphone is part of what makes the device smart (interactive).
"Smart X" is a pretty widely used convention, where X is some not-very-interactive device which has some sort of interactive UX added to it in order to make it smart.
Many Smart TVs these days have microphones too. Should we call those "smart microphones" as well?
It's in like the seventh paragraph of the article - I think people have figured out that they're talking about Echo and Alexa. And the salient point for the sentence (which ends "we should also be critical about where the data extracted from us ends up") is the microphone part of the product and not the rest of it. It's more specific, not more confusing.
I think it’s fair to characterize the device as a (smart) microphone. Without that ability it wouldn’t be able to process people’s queries. Obviously AMZ wants to minimize the association with “mics” because it atunes people to that aspect of the device (ie in listening mode).
>The screenshot shows a request, not a demand. The tweet’s headline is clearly clickbait
And amazon will stop offering free devices for their journalism and their AWS services will be flaky if they don't comply with the "request". Pretending like there is no leverage here from Amazon is a bit obtuse.