Amazon employees working with the company’s Alexa digital voice assistant reportedly review audio recorded from the homes of Amazon Echo users while they work to improve Alexa’s voice recognition and command responses.
Several employees told Bloomberg News that dozens of Amazon employees working out of countries such as India, Romania, Costa Rica and the U.S. listen to voice recordings taken by Amazon’s Echo systems, which the workers then transcribe and annotate for use in Alexa’s understanding of human speech patterns.
The practice has exposed Amazon employees to recordings that would otherwise be private, according to Bloomberg. The outlet reported that Amazon employees have discussed in internal chat rooms amusing audio clips recorded by the Echo systems, as well as hearing recordings that are shocking or possibly criminal, such as possible sexual assaults, which two workers reported having heard.
Amazon workers described to Bloomberg hearing other audio clips including a child screaming for help and a woman singing off key in the shower.
Bloomberg noted that a frequently asked questions site detailing concerns about the Alexa software did not mention specifically that human beings would have access to audio files recorded in users’ homes.
“We use your requests to Alexa to train our speech recognition and natural language understanding systems,” the webpage reads.
An Amazon spokesperson told Bloomberg that precautions are taken to ensure that Amazon employees do not have access to identifying information about the owners overheard in the audio clips, and stressed that proper privacy protections were being observed.
In Alexa’s privacy settings, the company allows users to disable the use of their voice recordings for the development of new features.
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Amazon workers study people's conversations recorded by Alexa https://t.co/SKQs3wnZ0E pic.twitter.com/KJoAvRdBF6
— The Hill (@thehill) April 11, 2019
Don't buy one. And if you buy one, don't take it out of the box. And if you take it out of the box, don't plug it in.
Solved. https://t.co/c5q6rhGlgj
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) April 11, 2019
Glad I don’t have one of those things.
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