Amazon Quietly Gives Alexa's Voice Recordings a 'No Human Review' Option

"Amazon Alexa users can now choose whether human reviewers listen to recordings of their exchanges with the AI assistant," reports VentureBeat, citing an Amazon spokesperson. To ensure people don't listen to voice recordings collected following each exchange with Alexa, go to Settings, tap the Alexa Privacy link, then choose Manage How Your Data Improves Alexa. Users can also delete their voice recordings via the Alexa app or Amazon website.

The news follows Amazon's introduction of an "Alexa, delete what I said today" voice command in May...

Earlier this week, Google and Apple both pledged to suspend some of their voice data review by people.

Trust is the issue

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Whenever Amazon promises to delete recordings, Google promises to not track you, or Facebook promises to randomize your data to anonymize you, my first reactions is to not believe a word they say. Cuz ya know, it's not like these companies' track record in privacy matters make them very believable...

So yeah, no human review of Alexa recordings... maybe. Or maybe not. Me, it's gonna be no Alexa recordings in the first place...

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Until voice assistants are entirely local, I won't use them. They're mostly an inefficient interface anyway.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

There's Mycroft [mycroft.ai], an open source digital assistant. I think they're working on a local-only assistant. However, like you say, it's an inefficient interface. Even with full privacy I'd probably not use it for more than a party trick. Not until they can get real, non-trivial amounts of work done for me.

Amazon Analytica

[PolygamousRanchKid]

So yeah, no human review of Alexa recordings... maybe. Or maybe not. Me, it's gonna be no Alexa recordings in the first place...

For large scale intelligence gathering, they would use AI review instead anyway.

Did Amazon promise not to do that . . . ?

Listen in to political talk in a household . . . create some models about which way the community is swinging and what are the pain points.

This information will be worth a fortune to candidates.

Oh, and as to trust . . . only trust Amazon, Google, et. al. as far as you can throw them.

Re:

[Solandri]

Actually, for that purpose, a voice recognition-generated transcript of whatever conversations Alexa overhears would probably be more useful. Easier to search for keywords.

This is the same issue with the FBI's Carnivore software [wikipedia.org] two decades ago. The FBI was arguing that they didn't need a warrant to use it on everything because no human eyes saw the contents of the packets Carnivore sniffed. The software was the only thing that saw what was in the packets, and it would only flag packets for human revi

Re:Trust is the issue

[ShanghaiBill]

Whenever Amazon promises to delete recording ...

They don't need to lie. 99% of people aren't going to bother to click on the "No human review" option.

The last 1% aren't worth lying for.

Mmm Hmm

[rmdingler]

The interesting thing to remember, even if you believe the company, is that a format exists to listen to you in your home.

Should the powers that be (or some interested party) desire to override the off switch, you've laid the groundwork by installing the essential eavesdropping equipment yourself.

Story about a link didn't bother with a link

[onyxruby]

Story about how do do something didn't bother with the link or directions on how to do the very thing the story was about so here it is:

https://www.amazon.com/hz/mycd... [amazon.com]

"Training Alexa with recordings from a diverse range of customers helps ensure Alexa works well for everyone. With this setting on, your voice recordings may be used to develop new features and manually reviewed to help improve our services. Only an extremely small fraction of voice recordings are manually reviewed."

You may have to first loo

nevermind Alexa

[FudRucker]

if you have a smartphone laying around the house then guess what, you already have a 24/7/365 spy listening in on every word you say, my Samsung BIxby started blathering when i was not even talking, i was watching a Youtube video of some vlogger and Bixby started talking i am certain the vlogger on youtube triggered it because it was the only thing making noise in the house

Re:

[_merlin]

It's pretty easy to not agree to the terms so Bixby is disabled. All of Samsung's online things can be disabled by just not agreeing to the terms when setting up your phone.

Here's an idea...

[Cryptimus]

... how about not putting always-on surveillance devices into your house?

    Oh, and don't trust your phone either. SS7 has been enabling phone-based surveillance for decades.

Question is, what is the default

[SuperKendall]

I don't have an Alexa device myself so I cannot see the configuration screen.

If Amazon really cared about this, they will set the default to no human review.

But you and I and they know that cannot happen, because it would bring to a halt voice training efforts - they need a lot of data.

So I am pretty sure, the default is to allow review - which means giving the ability to set this is little more than a PR stunt, as few wrong even the people that care will bother to go turn it off.

I already had a 'no human review' option:

[Rick Schumann]

I never bought any of these so-called 'voice assistants' in the first place.
Want actual privacy? Unplug power from the thing when you're not using it. Or better yet, take a hammer to it and toss the remains in the e-waste bin.

This has been a Public Service announcement from your friendly neighborhood Rick Schumann. Have a great day! :-)

Re:

[Rick Schumann]

Baaaah! goes the AC. Good little sheep, buys whatever trendy shit Google/Facebook/Amazon tells him to buy! Got to keep up with the neighbors, otherwise what will they think of you, AC?

Questions

[WolfgangVL]

I have never actually seen one of these devices in the wild. People actually pay for them?

I was starting to think the whole thing was a charade to get people used to the 1984 2 way TV idea.

And how are these different from the smartphone exactly??