Related papers: Using Amazon Alexa APIs as a Source of Digital Evi…
This paper describes a new open domain dialogue system Alquist developed as part of the Alexa Prize competition for the Amazon Echo line of products. The Alquist dialogue system is designed to conduct a coherent and engaging conversation on…
CAPTCHAs are employed as a security measure to differentiate human users from bots. A new sound-based CAPTCHA is proposed in this paper, which exploits the gaps between human voice and synthetic voice rather than relays on the auditory…
This paper presents the design of the machine learning architecture that underlies the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK) a large scale Spoken Language Understanding (SLU) Software Development Kit (SDK) that enables developers to extend the…
Individuals increasingly face an overwhelming number of tasks and decisions. To cope with the new reality, there is growing research interest in developing intelligent agents that can effectively assist people across various aspects of…
Everyday devices like light bulbs and kitchen appliances are now embedded with so many features and automated behaviors that they have become complicated to actually use. While such "smart" capabilities can better support users' goals, the…
We propose a new class of signal injection attacks on microphones by physically converting light to sound. We show how an attacker can inject arbitrary audio signals to a target microphone by aiming an amplitude-modulated light at the…
The Amazon Alexa marketplace is the largest Voice Personal Assistant (VPA) platform with over 100,000 voice applications (i.e., skills) published to the skills store. In an effort to maintain the quality and trustworthiness of voice-apps,…
Domestic voice assistants and smart-home devices are increasingly embedded in everyday routines, yet their ethics are often treated as an afterthought or delegated to compliance teams. To explore how expectations about smart-home AI are…
Displaying a written transcript of what a human said (i.e. producing an "automatic speech recognition transcript") is a common feature for smartphone vocal assistants: the utterance produced by a human speaker (e.g. a question) is displayed…
The integration of medical devices in everyday life prompts the idea that these devices will increasingly have evidential value in civil and criminal proceedings. However, the investigation of these devices presents new challenges for the…
The development of artificial intelligence has significantly transformed people's lives. However, it has also posed a significant threat to privacy and security, with numerous instances of personal information being exposed online and…
Building open domain conversational systems that allow users to have engaging conversations on topics of their choice is a challenging task. Alexa Prize was launched in 2016 to tackle the problem of achieving natural, sustained, coherent…
With the advent and proliferation of online developer forums as informal documentation, developers often share their opinions about the APIs they use. Thus, opinions of others often shape the developer's perception and decisions related to…
Digital traces of our lives are now constantly produced by various connected devices, internet services and interactions. Our actions result in a multitude of heterogeneous data objects, or traces, kept in various locations in the cloud or…
As the permeability of AI systems in interpersonal domains like the home expands, their technical capabilities of generating explanations are required to be aligned with user expectations for transparency and reasoning. This paper presents…
Acoustic sensing has proved effective as a foundation for numerous applications in health and human behavior analysis. In this work, we focus on the problem of detecting in-person social interactions in naturalistic settings from audio…
The development of privacy-preserving automatic speaker verification systems has been the focus of a number of studies with the intent of allowing users to authenticate themselves without risking the privacy of their voice. However, current…
Advances in voice technology and voice user interfaces (VUIs) -- such as Alexa, Siri, and Google Home -- have opened up the potential for many new types of interaction. However, despite the potential of these devices reflected by the…
AI assistants are increasingly integrated into older adults' daily lives, offering new opportunities for social support and accessibility while raising important questions about privacy, autonomy, and trust. As these systems become embedded…
In the age of personal voice assistants, the question of privacy arises. These digital companions often lack memory of past interactions, while relying heavily on the internet for speech processing, raising privacy concerns. Modern…