Back in the day when digital assistants required users to press a button to launch them, launching them accidentally wasn’t as prevalent as today. These days we’re seeing more instances of how digital assistants are accidentally launching due to it hearing phrases which sounds like its trigger phrase.
Some of these instances have been hilarious, while some of them creepy. That being said, it seems that some of them also happen at the most inopportune of moments. Take for example a recent incident that took place in the UK where during a statement made by UK Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson, it seems that Siri on his iPhone was triggered which resulted in him being “heckled”.
When Siri interrupts as you're delivering a statement to Parliament… pic.twitter.com/NDsNUJDPV3
— BBC Parliament (@BBCParliament) July 3, 2018
According to Williamson, he suggests that this might be the first instance of someone being heckled by their own mobile device. There was a brief moment of levity as the rest of parliament looked on and laughed at the little mishap, but then it was back to business as usual. Like we said false positives seem to be a thing with digital assistants these days, and it is unclear what Williamson might have said for the phone to think that he said “Hey Siri”.
Either way hopefully this is something that companies like Apple, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft will look into in the future.