All surveillance, yes, but none of it pointed at your bed. The Show 5 is perfect for checking up on the feed from your baby monitor for example, or checking out who is at the door if you have a Ring doorbell. I don't mind the idea of a display that has a practical use outside of showing you the time. Who needs to see me first thing in the morning, hair matted to one side, bleary and puffy-eyed because I’ve had three hours of broken sleep? I don’t even want to see me first thing in the morning. ![]() Right now I don’t want video calls on a device sitting beside my bed. Our idea of what’s acceptable is shifting all the time. Time may well prove me wrong on that one if someone had suggested a few years ago that people would willingly install devices in their homes whose sole function was to listen to their every word, I wouldn’t have bet on those being particularly popular. ![]() We’re not ready for it yet – although I’m not convinced that we ever will be. If we are stuck with the smart speaker, and I suspect we are for the foreseeable future, I wish Amazon would stop trying to make the cameras happen. It’s a concession, but removing it altogether would be preferable. Who needs to see me first thing in the morning, hair matted to one side, bleary and puffy-eyed? When you slide it back and forth, a notification on screen tells you if the camera is on or off. The slider on top on the device is red, again to make it obvious when the camera is cut off. But, in Amazon’s defence, it has made the camera shutter white rather than black, so you’ll see it is shut with a glance. Someone could sneakily re-enable the camera it is only a slider after all. The camera functions on the Echo are limited for now, but who is to say where it will go in the future? My worst nightmare, that's where. My Alexa profile on Amazon is littered with accidental voice activations that give little snippets of my conversations to anyone with access to the account. The idea of having one in my bedroom fills me with a sort of revulsion, and that's mainly down to the camera. I have one of the 10-inch speakers in the kitchen, mainly so I can watch videos and get cooking instructions. The miniature Echo device has a 5.5-inch screen and a speaker that is way better than its size would imply. So it was against this background that I got hands-on with the Echo Show 5. The latest is Google Assistant and the tech giant's admission that human workers have listened to voice interactions. The recent spate of news stories about how these speakers operate and the level of human involvement in the voice transcripts hasn't helped soothe concerns about the devices. Excuse me while I ditch all my technology and seal myself in a Faraday cage. ![]() ![]() Even if you don’t have a smart speaker you may still be being spied on – you just don’t know it. We have video doorbells and internet-connected baby monitors, thermostats that adjust themselves when we aren’t at home, wifi lightbulbs and smart appliances that will soon remind us when the milk is running low. On the other, as the Snowden revelations laid out in terrifying technicolour detail, our smartphones, laptops and other similar devices can be weaponised against us. On the one hand, I like the idea of talking to something instead of tapping on a screen once you get over feeling foolish talking to a machine, it’s a much more natural way to do things. I have a love-hate relationship with smart speakers.
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