14 DAY TRIAL // Former Amazon executive Robert Frederick revealed in a recent interview that despite using Alexa speakers at home, he typically shuts them down whenever he wants to have “a private moment.”
“I don't want certain conversations to be heard by humans. Conversations that I know for a fact are not things that should be shared then I turn off those particular listening devices,” the told the BBC for a Panorama special called “Amazon: What they know about us.”
Smart speakers have previously come under fire for being used by parent companies to listen to user conversations at random times. Last year, for example, it was found that contractors hired by tech giants were listening to voice recordings collected via these companies’ smart speakers, all with the purpose of improving the digital assistants and refine the interaction with humans.
The audio snippets, however, contained various sensitive details, and further investigations into the data collected by smart speakers revealed that sometimes the recordings can even include user calls and phone sex.
Users allowed to disable recording analysis
Amazon, however, has already added an option to its smart speakers to allow users to disable the analysis of voice recordings that would technically enabling the uploading of certain data to its servers.
And in an updated statement, the company says the statements shared by Frederick to the BBC aren’t necessary relevant to the way Alexa speakers work in the first place, as the man left the company 14 years ago so he’s no longer up-to-date with the work they do in terms of privacy.
“It is surprising that someone who left Amazon 14 years ago is being quoted, about a technology that was developed a decade after he left. His quotes do not accurately portray how Alexa works,” an Amazon spokesperson told The Sun.
“To help improve Alexa, we manually review and annotate a small fraction of one percent of Alexa requests. Access to data annotation tools is only granted to a limited number of employees who require them to improve the service, and our annotation process does not associate voice recordings with any customer identifiable information. Customers can opt-out of having their voice recordings included in the fraction of one percent of voice recordings that get reviewed.”