Smart assistants are sensitive to their waking words but who among us does not activate smart speakers in the home with alarming frequency? Add some very detailed privacy setbacks and a general feeling of distrust and there are many reasons why you may want to mute your smart speaker from time to time.
A new device promises to do just that, by checking your Amazon Echo's always-on microphones via ultrasonic jamming. The gadget, nicknamed Alexagate, is the latest drop since starting a hype as an MSCHF service. Last month, the startup announced a partnership with YouTuber MrBeast and an app where users could win bug bucks as long as they kept their finger on the phone. The competition ended with multiple winners as the competition ran for hours to days.
Alexagate is a product for the times, which encapsulates many public and private fears of great technology. The device, which took over a year of planning to come to life, is new, but it works and required real engineering to be built. The device has 7 individual ultrasound speakers arranged to jam the speakers on the Echo devices by squeezing them with sound so that they can't hear anything else. A rotatable plastic interface allows Alexagate to adapt perfectly to most newer Echo devices.
The device does exactly what it says, blocking Alexa when it's turned on. If you want to use the smart speaker, you can applaud and disable Alexagate, allowing "Hey Alexa" to get a response from the Amazon smart speaker.
It was designed specifically for Amazon Echo devices, although Wiesner claims to have chosen Amazon primarily because their speakers were the most common. However, when you open the package, you are struck by a product guide titled "BYE BYE BEZOS", which indicates that the device is somehow intended to attach it to the richest man in the world.
The product manifesto raises doubts that great technology is listening to users: "Maybe you don't subscribe to the idea that Facebook always listens through your phone's microphone, but ask yourself at least this in all honesty: do you think the echo "mute" button really does something? "
While "So the guidelines we set ourselves internally when ideas of physical products come to mind are objects that have a point of view." MSCHF creative director Kevin Wiesner told ProWellTech in an interview. "You will put it in your living room and, in some ways, it is almost like a sign of virtue for someone who enters your home and sees it on your coffee table. It's an ostentatious privacy, in that sense because it's a bit like assuming that you start a discussion about what it means to have a smart device and what you're giving up for that. "
Smart speakers are far from essential devices, so the argument for users who may "need" something is that if they worry so much they should simply disconnect their Echo permanently and live without the slight comforts that offers. Although it is a functional device, Alexagate is more focused on the themes behind its creation. In many ways, the products of large tech companies are becoming inevitable and it is not wrong for users to appreciate some things about them and wish that they can avoid other elements of the products.
It is a topic used by supporters of decentralization who want the freedom to hack with the products of a company that they use so that they can customize them exactly for what they want. In the Alexagate instance, users may want the convenience of an intelligent speaker, but they want the controls and balance of an outside company to verify that they can't hear anything.
MSCHF's Alexagate device is now available on their website for $ 99. It doesn't appear to be available for purchase on Amazon yet.