← the record
WF-2TY6HY

Amazon employees listen to thousands of Alexa users' private voice recordings

The article reports that Amazon employs thousands of people globally to listen to voice recordings captured by Alexa devices in Echo owners' homes. The recordings are used to improve Alexa's speech recognition, but users are not explicitly told that humans listen to their conversations. Workers sometimes hear private moments, including a possible sexual assault. Amazon stated that only a small sample is annotated and strict safeguards are in place.

Organisation involved
Amazon.com Inc.
Product, system or model
Alexa
Where this came from
Share this incident
XLinkedInFacebookWhatsAppEmail
Attribution

This incident was imported from time.com. Our additions to it — the structured fields, the translation, the checks against other reports — are published under the same licence.

This is a record of what was reported, not a finding that anyone broke the law. If it names your organisation and you believe it is wrong, the corrections process is free and open to everyone.