We come to find now that your AI vacuum cleaner robot can be used to harass you and even spy on you.

There have been several robot vacuum cleaners which were hacked to yell obscenities and insults through the device’s speakers. Confirmed reports of the Chinese Ecovacs Deebot X2  are out. Ecovacs is a leading robotic vacuum brand, and a leader in the space.

The victim, Minnesota lawyer Daniel Swenson, said he heard sound snippets that seemed like a voice coming from his vacuum cleaner. Through the Ecovacs app, he then saw someone, person unknown, accessing the live camera feed of the vacuum as well as the remote-control.

Taking steps, he rebooted the vacuum cleaner and reset the password, just to be on the safe side. But that did not help. Instantly, the vacuum cleaner started moving again.  Only this time, the voice coming from the vacuum cleaner was loud and clear. It was yelling racist obscenities at Swenson and his family. The voice sounded like a teenager according to Swenson.

Swenson said he turned off the vacuum and dumped it in the garage permanently.

While terrible, it could be worse. What If the hackers had decided to keep quiet and just spy on the victim’s family? There is a known incidence where a photo taken by a Roomba vacuum cleaner of a woman sitting on a toilet which was shared on Facebook. Yikes.

Soon after the incident other similar incidents involving the Ecovacs Deebot X2 were reported. And even though Swenson had several discussions with  Ecovacs, no justifiable explanation resulted.

Ecovacs claims the victim’s credentials must have been stolen elsewhere. However, Ecovacs should not have allowed the video feed or access to remote control, under any circumstances. These features are supposed to be protected.

Ecovacs claims to have fixed this flaw. They claimed that company “sent a prompt email” instructing customers to change their passwords following the incident. However, Swenson says he never received any such email about the issue, asking if there were other victims as well.  .

Ecovacs claims it would issue a security upgrade in November. Until that happens you might want to do the same as Swenson and remove the risks from your home.