MY telly never listens to a word I say.
And I wouldn't have it any other way.
The gogglebox, it seems, can be a clype.
There's no need to be alarmed if, like me, you have one of those bog-standard switch-it-on-and-thump-it-if-it doesn't-work jobs. We're talking here about smart TVs. More specifically, smartass ones with voice recognition software. They're programmed to listen to people in the room to try to identify voice commands.
They sound OK, in theory. The software allows you to control your set with vocal prompts. I gather the idea is that you can say "BBC4" or something of that ilk and the TV will retune to the desired channel.
This could be useful if, being male, you're not in charge of the remote control. A quick "Hurry, switch to the fitba" when the wife gets up for a cup of tea, leaving you marooned in front of The Great British Sewing Bee, would be a useful feature.
But it's emerged that you need to be careful about what you utter in front of the box. Samsung has warned that anything you say may be taken down and used in evidence against you. The company's privacy statement cautions: "Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party."
You can deactivate the feature, of course, and Samsung uses data encryption, but still. It must be like having an electronic five-year-old in the corner of the room. You forget it's there, and then it gets you into trouble by blabbing the juicy gossip to its mate's mum and dad.
This voice recognition stuff is everywhere these days, and I hate it. You'll have seen the ad for that Amazon Fire thingy where the sofa-bound woman requests the device for "Fast and furious sex" instead of "Fast and Furious 6". I'd risk a clip on the ear at home if I shouted out "Who Do You Think You Are?". I might think it, but I'd never say it.
There's no escaping it on the phone either, especially when you call one of those companies who put up impressive barriers to prevent you from speaking to a human being.
I phoned my bank the other day, from my mobile. I can just about thole bellowing out my sort code and account number (I never seem to be able to get the keypad up in the middle of a call), but I'm hanged if I'm going to let the rest of the office know my date of birth in a six-digit format. That's more embarrassing than asking for fast and furious sex.
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