AMAZON IS LISTENING TO YOU, LITERALLY
Does Alexa do more than obey your commands?
AMAZON HAS BEEN employing thousands of people to listen to recordings of other people talking to Alexa. They review up to a thousand recordings a day, transcribing the intended commands of people all around the world as they try to get Alexa to do what they ask. Approximately 10 percent of the recordings have been made when Alexa has been accidentally activated. Workers have heard all sorts of private details, from the mundane to a suspected assault. Inevitably, some recordings get passed around, either for clarification or because they’re amusing.
Surprised? You shouldn’t be. Alexa’s translation service is powered by AI, which needs training, and the best way to do this is with a little help from humans. Understandably, Amazon has kept quiet about this “snooping.” It claims it only uses a small sample of recordings taken after Alexa has been activated, they are chosen at random, and no identifying data is revealed. However, the recordings do have an account ID, and the device serial number, along with a first name, so not exactly anonymous.
Apple and Google are busy doing the same thing for their voice assistants. And this isn’t the first time Amazon has been caught being careless with people’s private lives; it did a similar thing with recordings made by “smart” doorbells.
When you invite Alexa into your home, you sign away the right not to be recorded, and used in a AI training session. You can opt out if you have the smartphone version, by choosing not to “Help Develop New Features” in the privacy settings. This should stop anything being passed on, but the wording is non-specific.