As useful as smart speakers can be, they’ve also found seemingly unlimited ways to piss us off. There’s the speaking up when not spoken to, mishearing simple commands, getting confused when all you want to do is turn your lights off, and now, a new trick: using massive amounts of data when you’re not paying attention.
As reported by 9to5Google, owners of Google Home Speakers have noticed that the data usage for some smart speakers has been through the roof, with some users’ devices hogging upwards of 200GB in a single day. My Google Home Speaker has been affected by whatever is happening, too. According to data usage metrics available through my Nest router, the device has consumed nearly 89GB of data in the past week, though all I’ve used it for is simple voice commands—no music streaming or anything in that vein.
For reference, a separate Google smart speaker in my apartment, the Google Home Mini, has used only 1.2GB of data in that same timeframe. That’s… not great.
Google says that a fix for the issue is rolling out, but didn’t elaborate on much else.
“We are aware of the issue, and a fix is already rolling out that should address this for users,” Mark Alexander, a product manager at Google, told Gizmodo.
As 9to5Google notes, the timing of the massive data consumption seems to coincide with a firmware update that may be failing to download properly, though the company has offered no official explanation yet.
Source link







