Google Home Breaks Up Domestic Dispute by Calling the Police

Google Home Breaks Up Domestic Dispute by Calling the Police(gizmodo.com)

14 points by ronack 8 years ago | 16 comments

While I'm happy this was a (reasonably) positive outcome, my concern is that a family is watching an action movie or police procedural, a character on TV says "call 911" or "call the cops!", and suddenly a SWAT team is breaking down the door and pointing guns at everyone, maybe even shooting the family dog who rightfully barks at the intruders.

dpkonofa 8 years ago | |

Yeah... I'm curious what part of the conversation triggered the Google Home action because, typically, there's a trigger word/phrase or something that has to be used. If the trigger phrase is the standard "OK Google" or something along those lines, then I wonder what was said before "Call the sheriff" that was incorrectly interpreted as "OK Google" (or whatever the actual phrase was).

morganvachon 8 years ago | | |

It's my understanding that you can also say "Hey Google" to issue commands, and it's possible in this case that in the heated discussion the device heard "Hey did you..." as "Hey Google". I've activated my iPhone's Siri assistant before by saying "Hey Sir" to a boss who walked into my office.

DrScump 8 years ago |

  Google Home called 911 and the operator heard a confrontation in the background

I wasn't aware that it was legal for any unattended device to directly call 911 by itself in any USA jurisdiction. That's why alarm companies have human operators that discern whether local 911 is to be called.

ocdtrekkie 8 years ago | |

Arguably, the Home interpreting "call the sheriffs" to mean "call 911" isn't really "unattended" or "calling by itself". It's unintended in this particular case, but a person arguably initiated the call. Just like the voice dial on your phone.

closeparen 8 years ago | |

This is a matter of getting the police to take it seriously and actually respond, and mitigating nuisance fees for calling with too many false alarms. The laws don't (generally) prohibit calling the police without a human in the loop, you'll just get better results if you have a human in the loop.

It's actually soon to be mandatory for new cars to automatically dial 911 using their onboard GSM when they detect a collision.

greglindahl 8 years ago | | |

Tesla currently has a human in the loop -- they'll call the owner a few minutes after a collision is detected.

EADGBE 8 years ago | | |

Oh, good, I won't need to pay for my OnStar emergency response anymore.

EADGBE 8 years ago |

Correction: ABC News has amended and editor’s note to its story clarifying that the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Department did not specify the type of smart device that called them to the home. An earlier version of this post cited ABC’s story and claimed a Google Home called police.

They were house sitting. It's not a stretch to think that homeowners had other smart devices to listen in and see what's going on remotely, and call police if necessary. Nest cam possibly? It works with Google Home.

Also, there was a daughter (no mention of age) who may have been able to trigger an alarm system or call herself (though a traditional call negates the "smart device" claim by the sheriff's department).

I'm concerned if smart devices will start intervening with human arguments. When they're necessary, it's indeed a lifesaver. When they're not it can really break up otherwise healthy homes and cause a lot of stress.

mike_h 8 years ago |

The numbers around domestic violence are staggering:

http://ncadv.org/learn-more/statistics

It's also a notorious blind spot for law enforcement – even when restraining orders are issued, they're nearly unenforceable, and once the aggressor is in your house you're a sitting duck.

Ambient audio-UI devices could be the biggest technological break ever in monitoring for the presence and emotional state of the subject of a restraining order. It's not obvious like a security camera or alarm system, and opt-in to a monitoring app would be invisible.