An Amazon Echo smart speaker could be your best friend, if it records your partner cheating
(Picture: Andrew Matthews/PA Archive)Unfaithful lovers beware: that innocent-looking smart speaker sitting in the corner of your kitchen table might turn out to be your downfall.
Many people know that smart speakers like Amazon’s Alex or Google’s Nest are continually listening in the background, waiting to pick up their owner’s commands and spring into action.
But some might not know that they also keep a history of all voice commands barked at them.
In a video now gone viral, Jessica Lowman shared a screen recording of her Alexa app’s commands history, where she lands upon a couple of clips that appeared to prove her boyfriend was seeing another woman.
The video shows Lowman scrolling through a history of voice commands, stopping on a recorded command from a stranger that goes, “Alexa, what do you do then? Play Power Trip by Miguel.”
In the next recording, we then hear Lowman’s boyfriend asking Alexa to play the music “at volume eight”, seemingly proving that he was alone with the woman in his home. “The music was loud because they were having ‘fun’ together,” one commenter posited.
Lowman captioned the clip: “So this is how I caught my ex cheating I didn’t even know Alexa stored this shizzz.”
While the video didn’t specify the woman’s location, her other TikTok videos, which include the word “mum” and her usage of pound banknotes, point to her being a British lady.
The video has now amassed 4.4 million views, with viewers surprised that Alexa could do this and some others considering buying it for their boyfriends.
“Thank you now I know to buy him an Alexa for Christmas,” said one.
However, one commenter warned the same tech could be used back on Lowman: “It’s just funny bc i know he will turn it back on you”.
It’s not the first time, and likely it won’t be the last, that smart speakers play an increasingly more visible (or audible) role in our lives. Last month, researchers found that Alexa, Siri and other AI assistants could be hindering children’s cognitive development, in a blow to frazzled parents who outsource mundane tasks to them.
