Amazon Alexa has a history of privacy issues, with revelations in 2019 that thousands of Amazon employees were listening to and transcribing conversations with the assistant. In response to backlash, Amazon developed a feature that allowed users to stop human screeners from accessing their voice commands. Users can opt out of voice recording via Alexa’s privacy settings on the web or their mobile device.
Key takeaways:
- Amazon is upgrading the capabilities of its voice assistant, Alexa, using generative AI and user conversations to train its AI capabilities.
- Amazon admitted that user conversations with Alexa are being used for product improvement and development, but claims that only an extremely small fraction of users’ voice recordings are used in this way.
- Amazon Alexa has a problematic privacy history, with thousands of Amazon employees all over the world listening to and transcribing conversations that were had with the assistant in 2019.
- Users can opt out of voice recording by going to Alexa’s privacy settings on the web or their mobile device, or they can choose to discard their Alexa devices to maintain their privacy.