BBC voice assistant promises to summon streams even if you're just a little bit Brahms and Liszt
- Reference: 1591165686
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/06/03/bbc_launches_new_smart_assistant/
- Source link:
The assistant, called "Beeb", was announced in August 2019. At the time, Auntie said that it had no plans to create a smart speaker to rival Alexa or Google Assistant. Instead, its goal was to get users to engage with BBC content in new ways.
That's precisely what today's launch delivers. Beeb can play BBC radio stations, podcasts, or TV shows on PCs. Saying "OK Beeb, update me" will give the user a snapshot of the latest news headlines and weather forecasts. Users can also request fun facts, which will be delivered by the voice of QI's Sandi Toksvig.
Unlike other smart assistants, Beeb will be limited to content within the BBC's own network and the broadcaster says it has no plans to allow users to connect with third-party apps or content. This strikes The Reg as a slightly odd strategy given that Alexa and Google Home users can listen to a wide array of content streams, including the BBC's, through a wide range of content aggregators.
Technology companies have found themselves in hot water over the past few years for [1]commercialising user data collected through voice assistants .
The BBC is selling Beeb as a privacy-friendly option. Because the broadcaster is publicly funded, its business model is not built around using user data to create targeted advertising in the same way that Amazon and Google's are.
However the BBC says that although Beeb will not make any audio recordings of what users say, it will create and retain anonymised text transcripts, which will be used to improve the app in the future.
These transcripts will be shared with Microsoft to improve its Azure AI, which, like Alexa and Google Assistant, sometimes struggles to understand strong British accents. The BBC says that Beeb will specifically cater to understanding the variety of regional accents across the UK.
The voice assistant will only start when it hears the "OK Beeb" cue. Though the BBC warns that Beeb can activate itself it if hears something similar.
The new service is available for PCs and tablets in the UK as part of Microsoft's Windows Insider Program. ®
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2018/04/26/alexa_amazon_echo_spying/
Re: 1984
Under the spreading chestnut tree......
Re: 1984
Reading this passage (again) it dawns that perhaps the "optimistic" 1948 human could not phantom the 2020 "advances":
they had never mastered the secret of finding out what another human being was thinking
...until their developed automated, continuous tracking based profiling
They could be tracked down by inquiry, they could be squeezed out of you by torture
...or simply by offering you to carry around your own personal tracking device, for which you would stand in a queue to buy
They could not alter your feelings
...up to the point that they invented social media and started to foster a bubble culture with stories that amplify themselves, however crazy they seem at the start
...but the inner heart, whose workings were mysterious even to yourself, remained impregnable
widely available to countless (commercial) "service providers", enabling it to be tailored, aka steered without even you yourself realising it.
Re: 1984
...up to the point that they invented social media and started to foster a bubble culture with stories that amplify themselves, however crazy they seem at the start
I always got the impression that Social Media was for the distraction and manipulation of the Prole population.
“GPP feature?” said Arthur. “What’s that?”
“Oh, it says Genuine People Personalities.”
“Oh,” said Arthur, “sounds ghastly.”
Not 100% convinced
If the need for another, indeed any, live mic as a way to control a computer. I look forward to the day when someone asking 'what's the weather, computer?' will be told 'open the bloody curtains and look outside, you moron!'.
I have colleagues, and they seem on the whole sane and balanced people, who swear by these things - to the extent of having multiple instances in the same room 'for stereo' - so there must be something in it... but I fear I am not the target audience.
Re: Not 100% convinced
>what's the weather, computer?
I'd prefer the answer, "It's the prevailing atmospheric conditions, but that's not important right now."
Reinventing the wheel with the licence fee?
I'm not sure why the BBC feel the need to re-invent a wheel here using licence-payer's money?
Surely this would be better-served by a skill for existing voice services (particularly as they are feeding back data to them anyway) rather than the development/support drag that this will cause.
Is this because the iPlayer forced sign-in is (via an arbitrary email address not linked to the licence fee number in any way) not providing the level of data to them that they desired as they can't match it to subscribers on their own?
Re: Reinventing the wheel with the licence fee?
"I'm not sure why the BBC feel the need to re-invent a wheel here using licence-payer's money?"
Exactly. I can do all the things they suggest and more using just Alexa and amazon devices.
Re: Alexa etc
I've recently acquired my first Alexa box (the Fire Stick one), on the basis that by now it might be able to do something to justify the money I paid for it. I've already got Chromecast and Roku gadgets, which don't really do anything to justify their existence.
If I ask Alexa to play BBC 6 Music (it's a radio station), Alexa puts a BBC logo on the TV screeen and plays the station and that's about all it does. Even my actual not-very-smart TV mostly manages to do more than that when playing BBC 6 Music direct from an aerial or via a dish; as well as the logo, there's usually some programme info, for example, and quite often there's some "now playing" info too. Alexa even lacks most of those. Am I holding it wrong or something?
In general it isn't even as useful (valuable to me) as the BBC Sounds app. Which in turn is nothing like as useful as BBC iPlayer Radio before it was abandoned.
Why?
"The BBC is selling Beeb as a privacy-friendly option"
"transcripts will be shared with Microsoft to improve its Azure AI"
Not quite sure how these two statements can be considered compatible, but maybe I'm missing something.
Re: "The BBC is selling Beeb as a privacy-friendly option"
And probably linked to your iPlayer sign-on.
They missed a trick, they should have called it [1]Auntie Beeb though. Makes a nice change from Big Brother.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-23572,00.html
Dear BBC
Techno-things I'd probably like you to spend my licence money on might include
* reviving iPlayer Radio (or equivalent functionality in some other BBC app)
* platform-independence in apps where possible - I have a variety of media streamers and phones and PCs and yet only on a tiny subset of them can I get anything close to what iPlayer Radio used to offer.
* Meaningful privacy guarantees, or the DG gets an indefinite seat at a vogon poetry-reading session.
Yours, A Licence Payer.
ps
some news and current affairs coverage outside the M25 congestion zone would be welcome too.
Re: Dear BBC
"some news and current affairs coverage outside the M25".
I disagree. The BBC News website is overloaded with stuff from Wales and Scotland, even though they must surely know that my IP address is in England.
It is time for the minorities in the Remote West and North to behave like minorities and stop imposing their boring lives on the rest of us.
Mockney
If you are going to mess around with Mockney, for God's sake get the experts onto it: Dick Van Dyke.
1984
“He thought of the telescreen with its never-sleeping ear. They could spy upon you night and day, but if you kept your head you could still outwit them. With all their cleverness they had never mastered the secret of finding out what another human being was thinking. . . . Facts, at any rate, could not be kept hidden. They could be tracked down by inquiry, they could be squeezed out of you by torture. But if the object was not to stay alive but to stay human, what difference did it ultimately make? They could not alter your feelings; for that matter you could not alter them yourself, even if you wanted to. They could lay bare in the utmost detail everything that you had done or said or thought; but the inner heart, whose workings were mysterious even to yourself, remained impregnable.”
― George Orwell, 1984