What is a Smart Speaker and How Does it Work?

There are many smart speaker devices available today. You may have heard of a few common brands like a Google Home or an Amazon Echo. Not only can smart speakers play music, they can respond to voice commands and even control other devices around your home.

Smart speakers are voice activated. They use voice recognition to accept commands from a user and then execute them. You can ask the speaker to do many tasks, such as play music, start a timer or make a note. You can even ask a question and the speaker can provide an answer based on a Google search. If you connect your speaker to other smart devices, you can control things such as your thermostat, lights, door locks, security monitoring and more.

Different brands of smart speakers use varied voice recognition systems. You’re probably familiar with Siri for Apple, Alexa for Amazon or Google for Google Home. The voice recognition system is what responds back to your commands. Generally, the way a smart speaker works is by listening to your speech and activating with a specific command word. For instance, Amazon’s command word is Alexa. Once the speaker hears the command word, it activates the system.

When you first setup your smart speaker, the system will run through a learning process to get to know your voice and how you speak so the system can best understand your commands.

Are smart speakers secure? We recommend using device security best practices with smart speakers. When setting up your smart speaker, use a strong and unique password. Then, make sure you connect to your home WiFi network that should also be password-protected.

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