A voice assistant activated during a family conversation about a hedge has delivered the current time in Perth and considers the interaction complete.

Nobody had addressed it. Nobody has ever been to Perth.

“Somebody said a word that sounded like its name,” said household member Jocasta Pemberley-Adu. “We don’t know which word. We have tried to reproduce it.”

The Bureau of Ambient Devices reports that false activations occur an average of nineteen times per week per household and that the assistant’s confidence is unaffected by being wrong.

“It does not apologise, because from its position nothing has gone wrong,” said Bureau analyst Dr. Emeka Sallinen. “A question was detected. An answer was supplied. The transaction is closed.”

The household attempted to stop the device mid-answer by saying “stop,” which the assistant interpreted as a follow-up and responded to by offering to set a timer.

Bureau research indicates that households eventually stop correcting the device and begin working around it, lowering their voices near the counter and, in 12 per cent of cases, developing a nickname for it that is never used aloud in its presence.

The hedge discussion did not resume. It has been rescheduled, informally, to the garden.