Amazon Alexa Records a Private Conversation of Couple Before Sharing It With a Random Contact

With the growing need for technology, Artificial Intelligence will be the core for all the innovations to come in future. We already have various AI assistants in this day and age, but the question arises whether or not it is safe to trust such a device as privacy is the biggest concern considering the recent Cambridge Analytica Scandal incident.

With recent reports surfacing, ‘Alexa’ Amazon’s AI Assistant Device recorded a family’s conversation and shared it to a random contact without them knowing it. A family from Portland gets their conversation recorded and sent to one of their contacts. After which the contact alerted the family about the incident, they unplugged all Alexa-powered devices in their home and contacted Amazon. After a while, Amazon responded to the complaint and acknowledged that there was a glitch with the particular Echo Dot speaker and that Alexa misunderstood the conversation as a command.

Later in detail, Amazon replied that the recording was the result of an entirely accidental and unlucky series of events. The Alexa voice inside the Echo has a series of checks to ensure that messages are not sent without the explicit consent of the people stood around the device but somehow Alexa mistakenly thought that those checks had been satisfied. While the family is seeking a full refund and Amazon has reportedly only offered to 'de-provision' their Alexa communications.

Earlier this year, there were reports about the speakers refusing to fulfil requests and then laughing weirdly without any laugh command from the users. The strange behaviour was the result of a misheard command for which Amazon adjusted Alexa to not laugh unsettlingly at random.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on May 25, 2018 04:10 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).