"Hey Google, That Wasn't For You" Takes Back The Last Thing You Said

Smart speakers may be very popular but they're also notorious for potential privacy issues. Companies like Google and Amazon assure customers that thee speakers only start recording after they hear their trigger phrase. The problem is that these smart assistants often mishear the conversation around them and may accidentally send Google some embarrassing phrases. Fortunately, there's now a phrase that can roll back time, even for only a few seconds.

There is almost some wisdom in how smart assistant developers restrict phrases that trigger them. Those phrases have to be intentionally said and are less likely to be used in regular conversation. Mistakes do happen, however, even when what you said had no resemblance to "Alexa" or "Hey, Google" whatsoever.

For those times when you didn't intend to include Google Assistant into the conversation, you can just say "Hey Google, that wasn't for you". More than just stopping Google Assistant from further listening in on your conversation, it also wipes that last utterance from its memory. That is to say, it tells Google to delete whatever it recorded from your account's activity history.

There are other ways for you to tell Google Assistant to forget about the immediate past. You can ask it to delete the last conversation or even today's entire activity. And you can always have more fine-grained control over each and every recorded query from your Google Account's activity controls on the Web.

There is still some amount of controversy regarding smart speakers' activities, especially when owners did not explicitly call the device's attention. While this isn't exactly a solution, it does give users a more convenient way to step back in time and undo the harm that was done. At least when it comes to accidentally spilling your secrets to your Google Nest Home speaker.