Amazon listens to people talking to Alexa voice assistant to make it smarter.
What is known
Several anonymous Amazon employees saidthat they listen to up to a thousand user voice requests every day. Everyone involved in transcription signs non-disclosure documents. According to the company, customer privacy is very important to them. Therefore, they process only a small part of the recordings and use the data only to improve Alexa's artificial intelligence. Also, workers do not see information about people’s last name and place of residence, but they have access to the name and serial number of the device.
Workers listen and comment on conversations withcolumn and then send them back to the system. This helps improve the voice assistant's understanding of queries. Especially when we are talking about different languages and dialects that were not taken into account during the development process. Amazon states:
"The more data we use for learningthese systems, the better is Alexa, and training Alexa with voice recordings from various clients ensures that Alexa works well for everyone. ”
There have been cases where employees heard users' personal information, such as a baby crying or singing in the shower. One day, two employees even came across a recording that sounded like harassment.