Google Assistant told users that their smart home devices weren’t set up yet thanks to an “experiment”

We’ve heard a few reports recently of users who have been receiving the error message “sorry, that device isn’t set up yet”, via Google Assistant while trying to interact with thermostats, lights, and more. A Google spokesperson has come forward to clear up the issue and has stated that it was occurring as a result of an internal and “limited experiment”.

“This Tuesday, a subset of Google Assistant users experienced an error when using voice commands to control their home devices. Upon investigation, we found this issue was connected to a limited experiment that had been rolled out to a limited number of people. This issue has now been fixed and voice actions are restored. We apologize for any inconvenience caused.”

The error only affected a small subset of users, and only when they chose to utilize voice commands. Touch inputs continued to work without issue. Whatever that “limited experiment” was and is, remains a mystery. It’s unclear whether or not it was only pushed to users who are a part of the Preview Program, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Here’s why that’s significant – Preview Program users opt to receive updates that are not fully rolled out yet and understand that the risks include bugs and broken features. Regular users didn’t ask for this experiment to be thrust upon them, so hopefully, we’ll get more clarity surrounding this in the coming days.

Google seems to have a lot of little mishaps lately related to software. For instance, Google Photos users on iOS went almost a whole year with their storage quota being counted inaccurately. Additionally, original Nest Aware subscribers weren’t even charged for a month or two until Google realized and back charged them! With so much AI and machine learning technology, it’s odd to think that such things slip through the cracks when they’re automated.

I don’t recall so many oddities occurring so frequently in years past, but I also wasn’t writing about them every day, so perhaps that’s why. Either way, let us know in the comments section what you think about this “limited experiment”. Why didn’t Google tell its users the details of that experiment if it’s being tested on them?