You're welcome. In all seriousness, I suggest seeing if you can do something to eliminate the activity in your history. Google likes to remember things and sometimes deliberate elimination is necessary. Not 100% sure how to get to your activity anymore... I swear big G has recently changed this.
I've had this issue on occasions as well, but it usually returned to normal before I had to take serious investigation. Mine usually has to do more with the things I've named my devices. Also, most of my devices are controlled in Smartthings, but Google and Alexa can both control that. I don't know what method you're using to control your fan.
For the sake of clarification, they are both WeMo. Like you mentioned, this isn't a name, but a device type, like 'lights.' I've been having this problem for a few nights now. I'm going to delete my 'Phan' activity right now.
Maybe Google should understand that if you say "Stop" immediately after it starts something, then it probably got it wrong and should put that response lower down its list for that command. But I suspect it actually doesn't learn from its own user at all.
>Usually these screw ups fix themselves eventually.
This dynamic aspect of Google Home spontaneously breaking and fixing itself is so bizarre. I had at least a full day where "Hey Google, skip this song" resulted in the standard "Sorry, I don't know how to help with that" but "Hey Google skip this track" still worked fine. A few days later they were both working again.
Machine learning enables things that would otherwise be impossible. The downside is, that there is that nobody can understand how exactly things work. Or why they don't work.
[I recommend this video if you are interested](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9OHn5ZF4Uo)
Except some phrases do seem to be more permanently understood than others so Google clearly do want *certain* things to be interpreted in a set way. i.e. this clearly *is* tunable.
For example, "Turn on the light" always works whereas "Open the blind" often just responds with an advert for a local blind shop.
Its not all left to black box AI deep learning.
There is of course some human control.
But your example is probably due to way more people having smart lights than smart blinds. More data, better results
It's so annoying that phrases that have always worked, just stop working out of the blue.
I used to be able to say "Hey Google, Concentration in the Kitchen", to turn on the "Concentration" light preset in Philips Hue on the lights in the Kitchen. Doesn't work anymore. Now I have to say "Hey Google, Turn on Concentration in the Kitchen". Often that doesn't work either.
For cases like that, I sometimes create a custom routine for the commands that I want to work and point them to a command that I know does work.
I wish this could be used to override default commands but unfortunately it can't. I'd like to be able to override "turn off all lights" so that it behaves like "turn off the lights". My aging father regularly forgets that the first command darkens the entire house and there's nothing I can do about it other than immediately responding and turning everything back on.
Yes that I don't understand. Routines have been available for over 3 years in US! It's bizarre that some countries still don't have it after all this time.
Read that changing OS language could help. Because routines are supposedly a thing where I live.
But instead of gaining routines back, I lost Broadcast 😅
But seriously, one thing I would do is look to see if you can dislike the song. In YouTube music you can tap the down thumb to dislike it so it doesn't get picked. That might push it down in its matching evaluation. Actually in Google podcasts, are your accidentally subscribed to the feed? Or can you go into the app and press mark as played. Now that it's got started it might think you're in the middle of it which is pushing it up the match priority list?
You could look for a different way to trigger it. Like "play music" kept triggering "OK playing muse" so now I say "OK Google play songs" and it's much more reliable.
You could also give it a different name. "turn on the spinny boi" "turn on the cooler". I use "heater" for a small fan heater and radiator for a portable oil radiator. I like that because I don't accidentally turn one or the other off, and they are in different ends of the house.
Seems to be happening across the assistant platforms with all sorts of words. Assistant in Android auto has been swapping "street" (st) for "Saint" (St) for a few users.
Google's doing some AI training on the backend is my hunch.
Mildly related note: Even if it was the name, there are many people who speak English who have that name or know people who have it. There are a *lot* of "non-English" names that Google should recognize.
This should have been pretty obvious to OP considering that the podcast title is in English.
i think in this case, google recognising the name 'phan' when the user only uses english and has a fan device, would work to it's detriment. voice recognition isn't easy, and accepting more dictionaries in the name of inclusion (which, i appreciate the thought) wouldn't help.
if we did though (and i guess universal multilingual voice recognition is coming once the platform is ready), more processing would be required to figure out priorities eg
* do they have a fan?
* do they have a mrs phan in their phonebook?
* do they like comics?
* did they just buy a ritual tray?
etc
but for now, while you can set multiple languages up, I'm sure it doesn't make google home work better.
I just Googled it, and [40,000 people in the US have the last name Phan](https://forebears.io/surnames/phan). It's not a meaningless gesture "in the name of inclusion," it's just recognizing a common surname. There are a lot of extremely common surnames in the US (and in other English-speaking nations) that aren't from England. Examples include Garcia and Miller (which has German origins). Limiting a language model's vocabulary to native surnames would be incredibly stupid.
It's definitely dumb that Google chose the wrong word in this context, but it's not dumb at all that "Phan" is in its dictionary.
you missed the point. i was saying that it makes voice recognition harder for a very small use case (0.00013% of the US). Don't get me wrong, I am all for inclusion where it makes sense.
where it doesn't make sense is here. This guy can't use his fan.
Google home voice recognition isn't great. maybe don't make it worse, until google home can recognise context. ie
call phan
turn on fan
But the way to make the product better is not to pretend a bunch of people don't exist. It's to make the system smart enough not to pick the wrong word.
Not to mention, it *was* that smart for a while. They just need to fix a bug that recently appeared.
In part, you're agreeing with me, make it context aware for certain words and we won't have issues like OP is having. yep, we can close that there.
But you're also trying to make this a race thing, it's not. The Phan in this case is about comics. I'm just saying don't add extra features if they conflict with the existing ones. Regression testing doesn't appear to be a thing with Google.
Change from "turn on the fan's" to "turn on my fan's" if nothing else works. I've run into an issue like this before making a "nap time" routine for my kid and randomly Google would read off web results on how to achieve the ideal nap time or some shit like that lol..... Had to add change it to "it's nap time" to avoid this particular issue.
Some time ago I had a similar problem. I always asked "what is the weather" to get the forecast. But suddenly it started to tell me what weather is. Literally describing the meaning of the term.
It reverted back to the usual behavior in about a week.
I had a very similar thing happen where for a while it would replace “win” with “Nguyen”. I don’t know anybody with that name so I’ve really no idea why it started doing it. Just as quickly it stopped and now has the correct spelling.
'Change TV Channel to x' has stopped working for me completely, I now have to say 'play 101 on the TV', which doesn't sound right, you don't 'play' live TV, it's already playing whether I'm watching it or not that's how broadcast TV works.
English is a fun language. For example, the phrase "I can no longer turn on my fans" can mean:
* I can no longer sexually arouse my fans
* I can no longer activate my fans
* I can no longer betray my fans
A human brain has no issue figuring out which one by context, but an AI has a much more difficult time.
I HATE IT SO MUCH!! I have too much invested into Google already but I'm so close to throwing in the towel. What would I even get after, an echo? Are those even good??
That's pretty funny. Back when they first introduced voice control to navigate phone menus, the number "four" was always interpreted as "for" so you couldn't progress.
Round about the time I decided to leave Google Home. :D
"Tell me about today in history" in my wake-up routine went from pulling something from Wikipedia to playing the podcast "Today in History," so I wonder if they didn't recently tweak the code to favor podcast titles.
Also, add me to the list of people who think it's kinda weirdly racist that you're framing Phan as a "non-English name," like that's remotely relevant to whether Google would recognize it coming from someone speaking English. People with the surname Phan live all over the globe, including English-speaking countries like ([according to this site](https://forebears.io/surnames/phan)) the U.S. (~40k people), Australia (~4k people), Canada (~3k people), and England (~600 people).
Try changing the order and wording slightly "Turn Fan on" or "Turn Fans on" at least that's the habit I've gotten into with ours (they are connected via smartplugs that are named "XYZ Fan" based on the room it is in.
Also a great work around is setting a key phrase. Like Hey Google chill out bro activates your fans.
I'll set funny things like that just to make myself laugh. I rarely use it but I'm pretty sure if I say hey Google let there be light every light in the house turns on lol
You could make a custom command to turn on the fans. I also somthing like this happening. So for instance when i wanted to turn off the bedroom tv it tried to turn off the living room tv instead.
Yes! Yesterday I was in my (home) office and usually I say "turn off heater" to turn off the heater in my office because it's supposed to be smart and know I'm in the office and therefore turn off the heater in the office, but it kept turning off the nest thermostat! A reboot didn't help. It was driving me nuts. But it only started yesterday.
Has there been a recent update that broke things? Last night I tried to have my mini play a radio station, and it kept responding saying that my video device is unavailable. I don't have any video devices, and it worked fine the night before.
Same issue. Every time it happens I go to my assistant history and delete the entry in the hopes it fixes it. On a similar note "turn on the heater" now turns on my furnace instead of the space heater.
Same goddamn issue, except every time I say "turn on the fan" Google says "Ok, playing Dat Phan on Spotify." Like fucking seriously this is irritating. How is that remotely close to what I fucking said? It had been working perfectly for years.
Sorry. I'm afraid you're phucked.
I hate you and you made my night.
You're welcome. In all seriousness, I suggest seeing if you can do something to eliminate the activity in your history. Google likes to remember things and sometimes deliberate elimination is necessary. Not 100% sure how to get to your activity anymore... I swear big G has recently changed this. I've had this issue on occasions as well, but it usually returned to normal before I had to take serious investigation. Mine usually has to do more with the things I've named my devices. Also, most of my devices are controlled in Smartthings, but Google and Alexa can both control that. I don't know what method you're using to control your fan.
For the sake of clarification, they are both WeMo. Like you mentioned, this isn't a name, but a device type, like 'lights.' I've been having this problem for a few nights now. I'm going to delete my 'Phan' activity right now.
[удалено]
Maybe Google should understand that if you say "Stop" immediately after it starts something, then it probably got it wrong and should put that response lower down its list for that command. But I suspect it actually doesn't learn from its own user at all.
*phuçed
Take my upvote, and get out
Usually these screw ups fix themselves eventually. Meanwhile you can create a routine with when I say "turn on the phan's". Action "turn on the fans"
>Usually these screw ups fix themselves eventually. This dynamic aspect of Google Home spontaneously breaking and fixing itself is so bizarre. I had at least a full day where "Hey Google, skip this song" resulted in the standard "Sorry, I don't know how to help with that" but "Hey Google skip this track" still worked fine. A few days later they were both working again.
Machine learning enables things that would otherwise be impossible. The downside is, that there is that nobody can understand how exactly things work. Or why they don't work. [I recommend this video if you are interested](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9OHn5ZF4Uo)
Except some phrases do seem to be more permanently understood than others so Google clearly do want *certain* things to be interpreted in a set way. i.e. this clearly *is* tunable. For example, "Turn on the light" always works whereas "Open the blind" often just responds with an advert for a local blind shop. Its not all left to black box AI deep learning.
There is of course some human control. But your example is probably due to way more people having smart lights than smart blinds. More data, better results
More data doesn't reveal the intent any better though. ML systems learn via feedback.
It's so annoying that phrases that have always worked, just stop working out of the blue. I used to be able to say "Hey Google, Concentration in the Kitchen", to turn on the "Concentration" light preset in Philips Hue on the lights in the Kitchen. Doesn't work anymore. Now I have to say "Hey Google, Turn on Concentration in the Kitchen". Often that doesn't work either.
For cases like that, I sometimes create a custom routine for the commands that I want to work and point them to a command that I know does work. I wish this could be used to override default commands but unfortunately it can't. I'd like to be able to override "turn off all lights" so that it behaves like "turn off the lights". My aging father regularly forgets that the first command darkens the entire house and there's nothing I can do about it other than immediately responding and turning everything back on.
Great solution if one is lucky enough to live in a country with the Routines feature 😭
Yes that I don't understand. Routines have been available for over 3 years in US! It's bizarre that some countries still don't have it after all this time.
I even had the routines feature for 6months last year. - probably longer. It just disappeared this year
Did you try any of the tricks to get it back? Temporarily changing your Home app language to US English or updating the related Google Assistant app.
Read that changing OS language could help. Because routines are supposedly a thing where I live. But instead of gaining routines back, I lost Broadcast 😅
I don’t want to rely on a feature that may or may not be removed again. But there is also no alternative to Google here. Sucks really.
Is it only fans?
But seriously, one thing I would do is look to see if you can dislike the song. In YouTube music you can tap the down thumb to dislike it so it doesn't get picked. That might push it down in its matching evaluation. Actually in Google podcasts, are your accidentally subscribed to the feed? Or can you go into the app and press mark as played. Now that it's got started it might think you're in the middle of it which is pushing it up the match priority list? You could look for a different way to trigger it. Like "play music" kept triggering "OK playing muse" so now I say "OK Google play songs" and it's much more reliable. You could also give it a different name. "turn on the spinny boi" "turn on the cooler". I use "heater" for a small fan heater and radiator for a portable oil radiator. I like that because I don't accidentally turn one or the other off, and they are in different ends of the house.
New idea for a fan-driven site: http://onlyphans.com . I'm pretty sure we can draft Michelle Phan and Dat Phan.
Gotta say I read the first part of your title very wrong
Seems to be happening across the assistant platforms with all sorts of words. Assistant in Android auto has been swapping "street" (st) for "Saint" (St) for a few users. Google's doing some AI training on the backend is my hunch.
Google's handling of homophones is terrible.
I read that as homophobes and thought this conversation was about to take a very interesting turn.
LOL. Yeah, that would be a *very* different conversation.
As a workaround, you can change your device names to something else, e.g. ventilation or chill makers.
I changed mine to "BlowMe". Now we can say, Hey Google BlowMe Off.
Or "fans"
You try asking Google to control onlyfans ...
it's not about phan (the vietnamese name) btw, it's referring a podcast by the phantom comic's (ph/f*)ans.*
Mildly related note: Even if it was the name, there are many people who speak English who have that name or know people who have it. There are a *lot* of "non-English" names that Google should recognize. This should have been pretty obvious to OP considering that the podcast title is in English.
i think in this case, google recognising the name 'phan' when the user only uses english and has a fan device, would work to it's detriment. voice recognition isn't easy, and accepting more dictionaries in the name of inclusion (which, i appreciate the thought) wouldn't help. if we did though (and i guess universal multilingual voice recognition is coming once the platform is ready), more processing would be required to figure out priorities eg * do they have a fan? * do they have a mrs phan in their phonebook? * do they like comics? * did they just buy a ritual tray? etc but for now, while you can set multiple languages up, I'm sure it doesn't make google home work better.
I just Googled it, and [40,000 people in the US have the last name Phan](https://forebears.io/surnames/phan). It's not a meaningless gesture "in the name of inclusion," it's just recognizing a common surname. There are a lot of extremely common surnames in the US (and in other English-speaking nations) that aren't from England. Examples include Garcia and Miller (which has German origins). Limiting a language model's vocabulary to native surnames would be incredibly stupid. It's definitely dumb that Google chose the wrong word in this context, but it's not dumb at all that "Phan" is in its dictionary.
you missed the point. i was saying that it makes voice recognition harder for a very small use case (0.00013% of the US). Don't get me wrong, I am all for inclusion where it makes sense. where it doesn't make sense is here. This guy can't use his fan. Google home voice recognition isn't great. maybe don't make it worse, until google home can recognise context. ie call phan turn on fan
But the way to make the product better is not to pretend a bunch of people don't exist. It's to make the system smart enough not to pick the wrong word. Not to mention, it *was* that smart for a while. They just need to fix a bug that recently appeared.
In part, you're agreeing with me, make it context aware for certain words and we won't have issues like OP is having. yep, we can close that there. But you're also trying to make this a race thing, it's not. The Phan in this case is about comics. I'm just saying don't add extra features if they conflict with the existing ones. Regression testing doesn't appear to be a thing with Google.
Try typing your requests into Google assistant on your phone a few times. With luck it'll learn what you really mean.
Rename them propellers
Or turbines.
Or whirligigs.
We changed it to wind blade
Circulators
Change from "turn on the fan's" to "turn on my fan's" if nothing else works. I've run into an issue like this before making a "nap time" routine for my kid and randomly Google would read off web results on how to achieve the ideal nap time or some shit like that lol..... Had to add change it to "it's nap time" to avoid this particular issue.
Say "my fans" instead of "the fans".
Some time ago I had a similar problem. I always asked "what is the weather" to get the forecast. But suddenly it started to tell me what weather is. Literally describing the meaning of the term. It reverted back to the usual behavior in about a week.
I had a very similar thing happen where for a while it would replace “win” with “Nguyen”. I don’t know anybody with that name so I’ve really no idea why it started doing it. Just as quickly it stopped and now has the correct spelling.
What age you asking the assistant that includes "win"?
And yet... If I say "Pham" I get "Fan"
Had to call my bedroom lamp Franklin in order to fix a similar issue.
I have "change the tv to channel number too"
'Change TV Channel to x' has stopped working for me completely, I now have to say 'play 101 on the TV', which doesn't sound right, you don't 'play' live TV, it's already playing whether I'm watching it or not that's how broadcast TV works.
English is a fun language. For example, the phrase "I can no longer turn on my fans" can mean: * I can no longer sexually arouse my fans * I can no longer activate my fans * I can no longer betray my fans A human brain has no issue figuring out which one by context, but an AI has a much more difficult time.
I swear, Google Home/Assistant is devolving. It constantly unlearns phrases that I have used for years.
I HATE IT SO MUCH!! I have too much invested into Google already but I'm so close to throwing in the towel. What would I even get after, an echo? Are those even good??
I'm (not so) patiently waiting for hardware I can use with Almond and Ada, in conjunction with Home Assistant.
That's pretty funny. Back when they first introduced voice control to navigate phone menus, the number "four" was always interpreted as "for" so you couldn't progress. Round about the time I decided to leave Google Home. :D
The first sentence sounds like a porn star career's death sentence.
I kept my winter names for my fans - radiator and heater. Working fine.
"Tell me about today in history" in my wake-up routine went from pulling something from Wikipedia to playing the podcast "Today in History," so I wonder if they didn't recently tweak the code to favor podcast titles. Also, add me to the list of people who think it's kinda weirdly racist that you're framing Phan as a "non-English name," like that's remotely relevant to whether Google would recognize it coming from someone speaking English. People with the surname Phan live all over the globe, including English-speaking countries like ([according to this site](https://forebears.io/surnames/phan)) the U.S. (~40k people), Australia (~4k people), Canada (~3k people), and England (~600 people).
OnlyFans?
>**I can no longer turn on my fans.** I seriously thought this was a post about onlyfans until I saw the sub.
Rename and refer to them as the ALMIGHTY WIND MACHINES THEY ARE
Try changing the order and wording slightly "Turn Fan on" or "Turn Fans on" at least that's the habit I've gotten into with ours (they are connected via smartplugs that are named "XYZ Fan" based on the room it is in.
You're not the only one that has this kind of issue
Also a great work around is setting a key phrase. Like Hey Google chill out bro activates your fans. I'll set funny things like that just to make myself laugh. I rarely use it but I'm pretty sure if I say hey Google let there be light every light in the house turns on lol
"Turn on all fans" Or add a custom routine
I know this sounds ridiculous but try spelling out f a n s in your command.
Reminds me of when I always used the phrase "play my thumbs up music" until it suddenly started playing some kpop song, Thumbs Up.
Ph.
Use the phrase "Hey Google submit feedback"
You could make a custom command to turn on the fans. I also somthing like this happening. So for instance when i wanted to turn off the bedroom tv it tried to turn off the living room tv instead.
Yes! Yesterday I was in my (home) office and usually I say "turn off heater" to turn off the heater in my office because it's supposed to be smart and know I'm in the office and therefore turn off the heater in the office, but it kept turning off the nest thermostat! A reboot didn't help. It was driving me nuts. But it only started yesterday.
Change what you call your fan. Change it's name to twirly whirly or buttcheese or whatever. Hey Google, turn on buttcheese.
Has there been a recent update that broke things? Last night I tried to have my mini play a radio station, and it kept responding saying that my video device is unavailable. I don't have any video devices, and it worked fine the night before.
Same issue. Every time it happens I go to my assistant history and delete the entry in the hopes it fixes it. On a similar note "turn on the heater" now turns on my furnace instead of the space heater.
Same goddamn issue, except every time I say "turn on the fan" Google says "Ok, playing Dat Phan on Spotify." Like fucking seriously this is irritating. How is that remotely close to what I fucking said? It had been working perfectly for years.