While digital assistants like Apple’s Siri, Google’s Google Assistant, Samsung’s Bixby, and Amazon’s Alexa are pretty helpful and convenient for us all, there have been some privacy and security concerns especially of late. A report from Bloomberg earlier said that Amazon lets a “team of humans” listen to and review some of these recordings from Alexa. After some users and groups aired concerns about this, Amazon is now giving you a way to opt out of the whole voice recording review process.
The Bloomberg report revealed that in order to improve the software algorithms of the voice assistant, Amazon get humans to review some of the Alexa recordings that they have. They are not alone in this as both Google and Apple have also been recently cited for this kind of business practice that may put their consumers’ privacy at risk. And so now to appease these concerns, Amazon will let you opt out of your Alexa recordings possibly being reviewed by humans.
While the option is there, you would have to specifically know how to access it to opt out. You go to the Alexa app and then the Settings section and choose Alexa Privacy. There will be a page called “Manage How Your Data Improves Alexa” and there’s a switch next to the “Help Improve Amazon Services and Develop New Features” which you should switch off. You will get a prompt that tells you voice recognition and new features may not work for you and if you agree just tap “Turn Off”.
The Alexa app also now includes information about how humans may be part of the review process to help improve how the assistant works. However, they stress that ‘only an extremely small fraction of voice recordings are manually reviewed.’ But if you don’t feel comfortable about the possibility being part of that small fraction, then you at least now have the option to remove that possibility.
While it is good that Amazon is giving users this option, the process doesn’t seem to be easy to find unlike just going to the settings. You will have to know specifically how to do it so if you don’t read articles like this or research about it, you wouldn’t know. Well, now that you’ve read this, at least you know.
