New Wake Word, and a Bit of Research

We're starting to see scattered reports across a variety of global regions that there is a new wake word - "COMPUTER" - starting to roll out as devices get the newest firmware. For us here at 3PO-Labs this comes as no surprise, as we noted over a year ago - at the same time we predicted the "ECHO" wake word - that they had special logic for "COMPUTER" already built-in but not complete. This provides us an opportunity to dive back in and see if there's anything new to uncover. Read on for some more technical details, and a running list of the information we can collect...

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The state of things

First off, here's all the information we've been able to collect about the rollout of the word "COMPUTER":

• The rollout is happening across all regions concurrently
• The option becomes available when your device gets firmware version 4812. This follows the numbering convention for first gen Echo and Dot devices. It's unclear so far what firmware version is required on second gen devices, as they use a different pattern.
• There doesn't seem to be a way to force a firmware upgrade of your devices.
• Using the source-editing trick we described here does not allow you to enable the wake word prior to getting the firmware upgrade...

We'll keep this list up to date as we collect more information. In the meantime, though, this new change has afforded us an opportunity to do some more investigation.

Digging deeper

So, we gave ourselves a pat on the back for being right about the "ECHO" wake word before it was released, and now for having guessed "COMPUTER", but to be honest it was fairly obvious, as Majel Roddenberry's "COMPUTER" from Star Trek is burned into the cultural hivemind. Obviously one or more engineers on the development team shared the same love for Star Trek as we did, and dropped that wake word in there early, even if it wasn't available to the public. For us, that immediately raises the question of "What else is tucked away in their serverside code?", so we decided to try a few things out and see what we could uncover.

Methodology

Our approach here is pretty simple. Using the technique described in our previous wake word article, we started off with "COMPUTER" as our baseline, knowing that it is special. We tried it against a variety of devices that did not yet have the firmware upgrade - a first gen Echo, a first gen Dot, and a second gen Dot. This allows us to control for both the firmware version and device type variables. We then repeated the process for a wake word we were sure was not ever going to be implemented, "OK GOOGLE". The thought is that if we could differentiate behavior between these attempted wake words, we'd have a hook we could use to analyze other possible entries.

Results

And in fact we were correct, their webservice treats "COMPUTER" differently than "OK GOOGLE" for devices that still don't have the firmware upgrade, and it does so consistently across all of our devices.

Response for wake word "OK GOOGLE"

Response for wake word "COMPUTER"

Our deduction here is that when you send something like "OK GOOGLE", the service just rejects it outright. When you send "COMPUTER", however, it tries to apply the upgrade to the device, fails, and then the webservice doesn't know how to handle that failure. Essentially, even though the update wasn't successful, we know that there's a special code path for that word in their system. We can use this technique to make further deductions about other wake words - if we get the null error, we know that's an interesting case.

Trying things out

Now this is where you guys come in - we're gonna start a running list of cases we've tried, but obviously we're limited in our creativity for wake words. Hit us up in the comments or directly, and let us know what wake words to test out for you.

Wake Words:

• "ALEXA" ✔
• "ECHO" ✔
• "AMAZON" ✔
• "COMPUTER" ?
• "OK GOOGLE" X
• "SIRI" X
• "HAL" X
• "DEEP THOUGHT" X
• "JARVIS" X
• "SKYNET" X 
• "JANE" X
• "MULTIVAC" X
• "DORA" X
• "CYCLOPS" X
• "JILL" X
  
• "BRAINIAC" X
• "MATRIX" X
• "ROBOT" X
• "ROSIE" X
• "ROBBIE" X
• "SHERLOCK" X
• "MYCROFT" X
• "EINSTEIN" X
• (Hit us up with ideas to try...)