Amazon Explains Why Alexa Recorded And Emailed A Private Conversation (mercurynews.com)

Amazon has issued the following statement about why their Alexa device recorded a woman's private conversation and then emailed it to one of her friends: Echo woke up due to a word in background conversation sounding like "Alexa." Then, the subsequent conversation was heard as a "send message" request. At which point, Alexa said out loud "To whom?" At which point, the background conversation was interpreted as a name in the customers contact list. Alexa then asked out loud, "[contact name], right?" Alexa then interpreted background conversation as "right." As unlikely as this string of events is, we are evaluating options to make this case even less likely.
This apparently didn't satisfy the woman whose conversation was recorded, according to the Mercury News:
Now her family has unplugged all the devices, and although Amazon offered to "de-provision" the devices of their communications features so they could keep using them to control their home, Danielle and her family reportedly want a refund instead.

When reached Friday, an Amazon spokeswoman would not comment about whether the company will issue a refund.

Other smart home speakers carry similar privacy risks. Last year, for example, Google had to release a patch for its Home Mini speakers after some of them were found to be recording everything.

Comments

Story Is informative, Summary is Fake News

[blazerw]

This is pretty sensationalist and, overall, poor summarizing. The actual story is nothing like the summary. Yes, the Alexa recorded the conversation and sent it. That is true, but the women's reaction of unplugging them all was immediate and NOT after Amazon's response. This summary portrays the order wrong to sensationalize. Also, the Google Mini issue was limited to very few devices and discovered before general release. The feature (bug) causing the issue was disabled before going on sale to the general public. Then permanently disabled when a fix was not possible. Seriously, the actual story is barely longer than the summary and much better. Do better.

Re:Sigh.

[mentil]

This isn't secret. You can actually go into the Alexa app and listen to voice clips of everything you've ever said to your Alexa devices. The clip even starts with the person saying 'Alexa' so there's a buffer which gets added to the recording once it detects you're addressing it. Sometimes you can even hear voice clips from other people talking to their own Alexa devices on other accounts, although customer support claims this is rare.

Re:Sounds like a fishy explanation to me

[drinkypoo]

There is too much of ~then some noise in the background is interpreted as a command~ excuses to make it a plausible explanation for me.

Nobody said "some noise in the background". There was a conversation occurring. It wasn't noise, it was speech. The device is designed to recognize speech. Apparently, it's not fantastically good at the job; or even adequately. It should be able to detect when a keyword it's listening for is part of a stream of conversation, meaning it's not meant for Alexa. That should actually be an easier job than recognizing the words. In any case, the actual phrase used was "a word in background conversation", and your misrepresentation is utterly disingenuous.

Summary of article.

[gurps_npc]

1) Alexa did exactly what it was designed to do.
2) It's speech recognition is a bit too sensitive
3) The whole world got a wake up call about what these horrendous, evil, machines do.
4) Most people still do not realize how stupid they are for installing clear and obviously ACTIVE espionage device into their home just to avoid having to push a button on their supposedly innactive espionage device that they carry with them all the time (cell phone).