Voice In Canada Flash Briefing #97

So here’s a interesting story that you may have heard about recently in the news.

There’s a family that reportedly states that Alexa heard what they were saying and then transmitted it as a message to somebody else.

And of course this has raised lots of concerns about what’s going on here. And granted, it sounds like this did actually happen, but Amazon was quick to respond and say, the reason this happened is because of a series of things that happened that are quite unusual and this would be a very unusual circumstance.

So basically what happened was two people were having a conversation and Alexa sent this message to someone else as a text message.

Here’s what Amazon’s response was to this. And I’ll read this from a quote.

It says that, “The Echo woke up due to a word in the background conversation that sounded like the wake word, Alexa. And then the subsequent conversation was heard as a send message request. So presumably something in this conversation sounded like the words send message. Then at that point Alexa asked out loud to whom? And at that point the background conversation was interpreted as a name of someone and then Alexa confirm the name asking like the name, right. And then Alexa interpreted something as being the word right and then eventually the message was sent”.

Chance of that happening are quite low.

Is Alexa Listening

So that’s a series of one, two, three, four or five different responses that were sort of interpreted in sequence that could have caused this problem.

Now Amazon has said obvious this is very, very rare, but it’s also very serious and they are investigating it and they’re trying to think of ways that they can minimize this from happening again.

Now if anything compromising was said, obviously this would be a big problem.

Fortunately in this case, I don’t think anything seriously compromising was said and me personally, I’m not too concerned about it.

I know some people are very concerned about it. I’m not, I just think that you know, it’s a perfect storm here of many different things that were said that were misinterpreted and the chance of that happening are quite low.

When you think about the millions and millions of Echoes that are out there.

And how often we’ve actually heard this happening. It’s quite low, but of course it makes it to the media, these stories.

So anyway, it is an interesting story for what it’s worth. And I don’t know if that changes your use of your Echo.

I’d be interested to hear if it does. But in any case there you go. It hasn’t changed my use.

So interesting story for your Saturday, and I hope you have a great weekend. We’ll talk again tomorrow.

Resources Mentioned in this Episode

Other Useful Resources

Listen on your Echo Device! Easy as 1-2-3!

Voice in Canada Skill Logo1. Open your Alexa app and click on the Menu button > Settings > Flash Briefing.
2. Click on “Add Content” and search for “Voice in Canada”.
3. Click on “Voice in Canada” and the Enable button.

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