Remember that time a news broadcast accidentally activated Amazon’s Alexa and ordered customers a bunch of dollhouses? We suppose that’s one of the downsides to an always-on feature, and it looks like Google Home users have encountered a similar problem with a recently aired ad during the Super Bowl.
According to a report from The Verge and a bunch of other Google Home owners on Twitter, it seems that during the ad, someone said “OK Google” which is basically the keyword that activates Google Home/Google Now/Google Assistant. This prompted Google Home devices to suddenly chime in and saying, “Sorry, something went wrong.”
Thankfully it appears that this was the extent of the activation and that no settings were messed up, no orders were accidentally made, no phone calls were made in error, and no messages were accidentally sent. However like we said this does seem to be one of the drawbacks of devices that are always-on.
We suppose in the future maybe companies will tweak the voice activation feature by making it activate only when it recognizes the user’s voice, but for now we suppose you’ll just have to be vigilant around your devices. In the meantime you can check out the offending ad in the video above, but maybe make sure Google Home isn’t within earshot!