SEATTLE, WA. (THECOUNT) — Amazon.com Inc. employs thousands of people around the world to help improve the Alexa digital assistant powering its line of Echo speakers. The team listens to voice recordings captured in Echo owners’ homes and offices. The recordings are transcribed, annotated and then fed back into the software as part of an effort to eliminate gaps in Alexa’s understanding of human speech and help it better respond to commands.
The Alexa voice review process, described by seven people who have worked on the program, highlights the often-overlooked human role in training software algorithms. In marketing materials Amazon says Alexa “lives in the cloud and is always getting smarter.” But like many software tools built to learn from experience, humans are doing some of the teaching.
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Danielle, an Amazon Echo user in Portland, Oregon, says she was shocked to learn her Echo had recorded a conversation with her husband without them knowing, then sent the audio file to one of his employees in Seattle.
My husband and I would joke and say I’d bet these devices are listening to what we’re saying,” Danielle told KIRO 7, a local news station in Seattle, Washington, which did not report her last name.
She said the incident happened two weeks ago when the employee called them to say she’d received a strange voice recording of them.
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