Alexa - are you my friend?
The telephone arrived at a time when technology was at the transition point of becoming a part of everyone’s life and since then, telephones have developed like few other 19th century technologies. We have seen Alexander Bell’s invention go from an oak box which one had to crank, to a rotary dial phone from the 1930’s until the 1960’s, to the popular slim line phone of the early 70’s to touch – tone phones. Phones which for long were wall mounted are now hand-held.
From having to crank the telephone to make a connection, it progressed to ‘dial’, to be then replaced by ‘touch’, which now is gradually pushed aside by ‘voice’. Voice Activated Virtual Assistants (VACA), baptized by manufacturers as Alexa, Siri or Cortana has given rise to simply saying “Alexa, call 077.......” Soon, VACA, which was viewed as a novelty became assimilated into our daily lives, where, once they enter our homes, they learn our behaviours and become an indispensable part of our day-to-day routine.
As in one’s home, hotels are beginning to wire the room lighting, the air-conditioning, the TV / entertainment set-up, the coffee maker and even the toilet to a system…not forgetting the phone to a system controlled by voice.
The voice revolution has only just begun. By 2021, Ovum the research firm, there will be almost as many voice activated assistants on the planet as people. Alexa, Siri or any of their voice activated virtual off springs can today be a humble servant – for now. As they grow technologically, they can become teacher, confidant or informant. Now that is a siri-ous matter. (Pun intended).
These disembodied virtual assistants provide a hands-free option to obtain information, control our environment and manage our schedules.. And like any eager-to-please assistant, they are always listening and pretty soon enter our ‘circle of trust’.
For instance, when you say the ‘wake word’, “Hey Alexa, can you ask housekeeping to send me an extra pillow?” or instruct “Siri, tell me a good seafood restaurant nearby? Each device (be it Alexa, Siri or whoever it is called) has a ‘wake word’ that triggers it to begin recording, processing, and transmitting what it hears. The danger here is that these devises can wake up accidently. When they do, do they record our private conversations and forward them to cloud-based storage? Is our personal information secure?
Stories on social media about Alexa waking guests up in the middle of the night without prompting or complaints of private conversations being recorded and then sent to someone in the contact list,(without been told to do so), add credence to this belief.
While it is highly unlikely that hotels would use Alexa to eavesdrop, the privacy policies regarding the Echo (the product name given to Amazon’s speakers which house Alexa),could be difficult to pin-point…and therein lies the problem. One needs to consider the potential security and privacy threats from this technology.
Hotels that do install Alexa, Siri, Cortana or any of their ‘offspring’s, can, at the very least, ensure that their guests are aware that these devices are in their rooms and, more importantly, that they are always ‘on’ and listening. It then behoves the guests as to whether to turn them off or keep them on. What would you do?
Ilzaf Keefahs is a freelance writer who enjoys focusing on hospitality related matters that he is passionate about, and likes to share his views with hoteliers and customers alike. He delves into the heart of hospitality to figure out both customer service and consumer trends that impact the industry.
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