Google home hostage

Devices like Google Home are supposed to be convenient, to make your everyday personal and professional life more seamless and productive.

Burger King thought they’d make life even easier for you by taking away that whole free will thing (so much work, right?) and activating your Google Home for you.

Just no

The fast food chain aired a commercial recently that was designed to take advantage of Google Home’s voice activation to extend the 15 second spot to a good 30 seconds at no extra cost to the King (except those pesky conscience pangs, and the PR nightmare currently brewing . . . other than that it was a great idea).

The commercial begins with a subject of the King spending nearly 15 seconds saying he doesn’t have enough time to tell you about how great the Whopper is.

Cool story. Then he busts out with this dirty trick: “Okay Google, what is the Whopper burger?”

Science time

If the commercial plays in an area near a Google Home device, everyone in the vicinity will be treated to a dramatic reading of the Wikipedia entry for the Whopper.

It’s akin to a brand representative walking into your home uninvited and changing the channel on your TV to a commercial for their product.

We at the AG did some investigating, and it seems that Google quickly shut down the effectiveness of the ad.

Data collection

We first tested to make sure our device wasn’t calibrated to a certain person’s voice. A parade of staffers got to say “Okay, Google” for science, and our hypothesis was correct: Google Home doesn’t care who’s talking to it – it loves the attention.

But when we played the ad for our smart friend, it listened (the light came on) but did not answer the sneaky Burger King invader.

If you for some reason want to ask your device what a Whopper is, however, it should work fine – it listens to our voices with no problem.
We then tested the devious ad on several Android phones, two Android tablets, and three Android smartwatches, all with the Google Assistant, which is also activated by the phrase “Okay, Google.”

Finding: our devices can’t be fooled.

They don’t trust commercial guy’s voice.

What about the whole recording factor, you ask?

We checked on that too. We’re all about that scientific method. We recorded our voices saying the exact same phrase: “Okay, Google, what is the Whopper Burger?”

Finding: Google Home answered our recorded question like a champ.

Conclusion: Google deliberately blocked the voice of this one actor saying this one phrase so that homes and offices everywhere couldn’t be infiltrated by the King.

Back off BK

Think about it: devices like Google Home, Amazon Echo’s Alexa, and Microsoft’s Cortana are all about autonomy and control. We ask them stuff, they answer. We tell them to do stuff, they do it. We’re supposed to be in charge. No one’s going to enjoy it if someone or something which is not them starts messing with their stuff.

Hopefully this is a one time stunt, and Burger King, along with any other company that might be thinking about more dirty tricks, will realize that literally no one will enjoy a commercial that’s also a remote control for their devices.

#HaveItYourWay