Voice-Activated TVs: Is It Magic or Technology?

Growing up I was always impressed by David Copperfield when he was on TV. He’s the legendary illusionist who holds 11 Guinness World Records, including one for the largest illusion ever staged. Secretly, I kind of wanted to do magic just like him.

Now this master of sleight-of-hand is showing us some real magic, having recently become the spokesperson for Samsung’s new line of Smart TVs, which respond to voice commands. (Check out the video below where he encourages people to shout at their TVs to turn off.)

This kind of technology is pretty appealing to me. I’m not the most organized person in the world and it seems like my TV remote is usually actively hiding from me. (Anybody else have this problem?) These new Smart TVs might make the remote control obsolete.

When you say “Volume up!” the TV’s volume does go up. You can also changes channels and control most of the other features on the TV in the same way.

Not everything works perfectly though. To raise the volume, you have to repeat the same comment multiple times and this can be tiresome (not to mention strange to any onlookers). The technology is already very advanced and I think that in coming iterations they’ll perfect it. This gives me hope that my childhood dream of doing magic like David Copperfield will come true and that I can stop frantically looking under sofa cushions for my remote.