Amazon workers listening to conversations through Alexa

SEATTLE — Amazon workers around the world could be recording, playing back, and analyzing what Alexa hears in your home.

KIRO 7's Gary Horcher first broke a story last May about Alexa sending random recordings of a couple's private conversations.

Amazon now says it’s listening to improve their software. Random recordings are broken down to make Alexa smarter and better able to understand what you're saying.

They say once your device is activated with a wake word, a recording of everything you say can be sent to the cloud and played back in an office in Romania.

Dr. Florian Schaub is a professor of information science at the University of Michigan, and he contributed to the Bloomberg investigation, which revealed Alexa recordings were analyzed by Amazon workers from Boston to Costa Rica, to India and Romania.

“It’s not necessarily surprising that this is happening, but that doesn’t make it less creepy,” said Schaub.

Amazon admitted it uses the recordings to improve their voice recognition software. But workers told Bloomberg they hear 1,000 random voice recordings per day, which sometimes included children screaming for help, people singing in the shower or even criminal acts.

Amazon told KIRO 7 "We only annotate an extremely small number of interactions from a random set of customers in order to improve the customer experience,” and "Employees do not have direct access to information that can identify the person or account as part of this workflow."

“I think people want to be able to use their smart speaker and not have to worry about their data being used in unexpected ways,” said Schaub.

Schaub says most people sign off on eavesdropping when they approve the terms of service and privacy policies.

“First of all, no one reads the privacy policies,” said Schaub.

Schaub said hidden in the terms are statements that they might use recordings to improve their service.

But he's concerned that in the future, interpretation of data you consider private could mean fewer important opportunities heading your way.

“It might be that job invitation you’re never getting, or that discounted health insurance policy that doesn’t get offered to you and you will never know why,” said Schaub.

His advice? Unplug smart speakers when you're not talking directly to them.

“Just be more aware of like, where’s the data going? What is this device kind of sitting in your corner silently, is it actually silent, or is it listening to you right now?” said Schaub.

We're told every brand of smart speaker does this, but you can opt out and delete your recordings on an app.

But Amazon says if you do that, you could be degrading your Alexa experience.

Cox Media Group