* install device that is designed to listen to speech in the house
* the device is connected to internet
* the device is capable of contacting other internet peers/services/hosts
* the device knows a bit about its owner's internet presence such as contacts
* the device is equipped with simple conversational user interface based on fuzzy human speech-command detection
These basically bound the failure modes of the complete system. I am not surprised that a glitch like that happened. I can certainly attest to how shocking it might be to discover first hand that it really did happen, but given the context I can't say it's hard to not foresee something like this.
* install device that is designed to listen to speech in the house
* the device is connected to internet
* the device is capable of contacting other internet peers/services/hosts
* the device knows a bit about its owner's internet presence such as contacts
* the device is equipped with simple conversational user interface based on fuzzy human speech-command detection
These basically bound the failure modes of the complete system. I am not surprised that a glitch like that happened. I can certainly attest to how shocking it might be to discover first hand that it really did happen, but given the context I can't say it's hard to not foresee something like this.