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Topics: Technology, Artificial Intelligence, Amazon, Google
Emily Brown
Topics: Technology, Artificial Intelligence, Amazon, Google
If you like having your smart speaker play you some music or tell you what the weather's going to be like before you even get out of bed, then you might want to pay attention to this expert's warning.
Smart speakers and AI are a common part of our everyday lives now, so much so that many of us can be caught off guard by old fashioned acts like having to physically turn down the volume on a speaker yourself, or having to Google every little fact rather than just having the disembodied voice in the corner fill you in.
The inventions have definitely introduced a new way of approaching everyday tasks, but now experts have warned that people using speakers like Amazon's Alexa should be wary about exactly where they are placing the speaker.
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Experts have warned specifically against placing the device in bedrooms, for fear of users themselves becoming the ‘entertainment.’
Tech expert Dr Hannah Fry is among those who voiced concerns when she spoke to the Daily Mail back in 2019, the same year whistleblowers from Amazon suggested workers might have been tapping into conversations in order to check that the devices were working properly.
She said: "This technology is activated by a trigger word [such as 'Alexa'] but it keeps recording for a short period afterwards. People accept that, but we should all spend more time thinking about what it means for us.
"There are people who are very senior in the tech world who will not have so much as a smartphone in their bedroom… If a company is offering you a device with an internet-connected microphone at a low price, you have to think about that very carefully…
"I have both an Alexa and a Google voice-activated device and I regularly turn them both off. People really must set their own limits."
In response to concerns about smart speakers, a spokesperson for Amazon told LADbible Group: "Echo devices are designed to record audio only after the device detects your chosen wake word (Alexa, Amazon, Echo, Ziggy or Computer).
"You will always know when Alexa is sending your request to the cloud because a blue light indicator will appear on your Echo device. We manually review only a small fraction of one percent of Alexa requests to help improve Alexa.
"Access to these review tools is only granted to a limited number of employees who require them to improve the service.
"Our review process does not associate voice recordings with any customer identifiable information."