Amazon Alexa mistakes private conversation for command
An Amazon Echo device recorded and sent a private conversation of a woman's private conversation with her husband to one of his employees in Seattle, raising concerns about their privacy. The Echo's Alexa voice software record ed a conversation a bout hardwood floors without the couple's knowledge, having been prompted to wake up ' due to a word in background conversation sounding like ' Alexa . '' Alexa then interpeted the conversation as a series of commands to send their conversation to a man in Seattle who was in the family’s contact list , a ccording to Amazon. The couple only found out about the mistake when the employee called and advised them to 'Unplug your Alexa devices right now ... You’re being hacked.' System 🤖 Amazon Alexa Operator: Developer: Amazon Country: U SA Sector: Consumer goods Purpose: Provide information, services Technology: NLP/text analysis; Natural language understanding (NLU); Speech recognition Issue: Privacy
- Date it happened
- 2018-05-01
- Organisation involved
- Amazon
- Product, system or model
- Amazon Alexa
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