Smart assistants like the Amazon Echo and Google Home have raised concerns since day one about their ability to constantly listen in on your private conversations at home or in the office. That's why an open-source project called "Project Alias" was created for all those people who care about their privacy to prevent smart assistants from listening in on your conversations.
The device, called Alias, is an assistant designed to fit on top of an Amazon Echo or Google Home. It continuously plays white noise to prevent the smart assistants from picking up any sound.
Project Alias looks like a mass of melted wax and consists of a Raspberry Pi, a microphone array, and two speakers, all covered by a 3D printed shell.
To stay “off-grid,” Alias only connects to the internet during the initial setup process. This prevents your conversations from being relayed beyond the device.
Every time Alias hears its own unique word, it stops creating white noise and activates Alexa or Google Home by playing “Alexa” or “OK Google” from its internal speaker.
You can then use your smart assistant as usual. The best part is that instead of saying Alexa or Google, you can customize your own unique word.
While there is the option to mute Alexa or Google Assistant during a private conversation, “Project Alias” is much better, as it gives you the same functionality with the added hands-free capability.
However, it should be noted that Alias cannot prevent Google or Amazon from recording the voice commands you enter while interacting with the assistant.
According to the developer's notes on GitHub, the project is still under development. Also, since it's a program that runs on a Raspberry Pi, you can't buy "Project Alias" as it would require some specialized knowledge to set it up.
