Raise your hand if you’re calling your smart speaker by saying its wake up word, then wait a second or two for it to light up. You may be surprised to know that you don’t have to wait for a response.
How Wake Word Detection Works
You probably know that your smart speaker is «always listening». This is different from «always recording», but privacy issues aside, the hardware inside your smart speaker constantly uses local processing to listen to its wake word so it’s ready at a moment’s notice.
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In the case of the Amazon Echo, the microphones are constantly working with the smart speaker’s processor and listening to any sounds they hear. If he hears something in the form of «uh-heh-heh», he knows to keep listening and start writing down what you say after that. From there, the voice data is analyzed and turned into action.
Since your Echo is constantly processing every sound it hears, it already listens to everything you say after it hears your word. The processors are fast, so it doesn’t take an extra second or two for it to gain composure before listening to your voice command.
But what about Wake Lights?