Amazon employees could listen to conversations of users of the "smart" speaker Echo

Data security issues are becoming more important every day. However, many companies, one way or another, worsen the situation in this direction. Bloomberg edition пишетthat Amazon employs thousands of people around the world. Their task is to listen to fragments of conversations that are recorded by Amazon Echo smart speakers with Alexa assistant. The resource refers to the words of seven people who worked in the program.

People are recruited in Boston (USA), Costa Rica, India and Romania. Among them are full-time employees of the company, as well as contractors. The task is to decipher the records, add comments and upload back to the system.

“You don’t think that the other person is listening to everything you say to your smart speaker in the privacy of your home. We used to think that the machine is engaged in magical machine learning. But in fact, there is still a manual component in this process, ”said University of Michigan professor Florian Schaub. At one time he was engaged in the study of privacy issues when using "smart" gadgets.

And Bloomberg noted that, according to marketing materials, Alexa "lives in the cloud and is constantly getting smarter." However, without people here is not complete yet. It is also noted that the Alexa voice assistant should respond to the word "Alexa", "Echo" or something else. To do this, the system records fragments of conversations. However, often the speaker turns on, reacting to similar words or just noise.

At the same time, even if the record was erroneous, it still needs to be deciphered early. Each employee can receive about a hundred such records daily. In total, you have to listen to up to 1000 audio messages per day per shift of 9 hours. At the same time, you need to look for mentions of artists, brands, and so on.

Background sounds are also subject to decoding, including cries for help, singing, or anything else. If employees capture personal information, such as bank account details, they mark the file as containing "critical data."

"We closely monitor the security and privacy of our customers' personal information," an Amazon spokesperson said. Also, according to him, the company decrypts an "extremely small" number of Alexa audio recordings, using this data to train the neural network and improve user experience.

Recall that earlier there was information that Amazon used Ukrainian operators instead of AI to control smart home systems. The company declined to comment. 

Source: 3dnews.ru