Who else listens to what you say to Alexa?

Trihexagonal · 04-11-2019, 08:09 AM

Quote:

Amazon reportedly has thousands of workers listening to Alexa chats

The company employs contractors “from Boston to Costa Rica, India and Romania” to listen to recordings made with Alexa using Amazon’s Echo speakers, according to a Bloomberg report on Wednesday. They then transcribe and annotate the text before using software to analyze it with the aim of enhancing Alexa’s abilities.

*snip*

A screenshot seen by Bloomberg indicated that the analyzed Alexa recordings — made after a user utters the device’s wake word — do not include information such as a user’s home address. They do, however, link to an account number, and also show the user’s first name and the device’s serial number.

According to two workers in Bucharest, a reviewer can deal with as many as 1,000 audio clips during a typical nine-hour shift, with the work described as “mostly mundane.”

The teams sometimes share audio files in internal chatrooms if they need help understanding a particular clip, though they might also share some “amusing” recordings if they come across one during their work, the report said.

Anything that can look at me or listen to what I have to say has no place in my home unless I have specifically set it up to do so. Like a security camera. That sounds more like a trojan IMO.

greencedar · 04-11-2019, 09:31 AM

Not surprised.

hazel · 04-11-2019, 11:57 AM

OK, I'm not surprised either. But I'm still disgusted. I don't understand the psychology of people who want to install these spies in their homes.

freemedia2018 · 04-11-2019, 12:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hazel

OK, I'm not surprised either. But I'm still disgusted. I don't understand the psychology of people who want to install these spies in their homes.

Apathy is a weird thing. If any person you knew did this to your home, you'd call the police. If a bunch of people at Amazon do it, little or no outrage.

It's not like people haven't spent years being conditioned to accept this. When do you throw your TV out-- when it tells you this is OK? When it does this to you itself? I can tell you what's wrong with people-- they trust their television more than their own family, and there's little hope at that point. But maybe one day they'll figure it out.

hazel · 04-11-2019, 01:00 PM

I assume people who install Alexa or that Google thing (is it called Dot?) get a sheaf of Terms & Conditions which they don't read. Somewhere in that verbiage is an agreement to let them pass around and analyse your speech data "to improve the user experience". And that, freemedia, is what makes it legal. If a person you know did it, it wouldn't be legal because there's no way they would have been able to trick you into giving them permission.

273 · 04-11-2019, 01:12 PM

I actually bought a couple of Amazon devices and tried them out. The Echo Dot looks fun and sounds passable for such a frivolous device, in my opinion. The Echo Show is a bit better, as it has a screen o whch to watch Amazon content.
Both fall down on not allowing things like YouTube easily; the voice recognition on both is surprisingly OK; neither knew how to set an alarm in another time zone, the tye of thing I may actually want or need from this kind of thing, and both were just annoying.