Along with the other tech companies developing intelligent voice assistants, Amazon has had its share of privacy fiascos, from thousands of employees listening to voice recordings to sending people's recordings to random contacts. The company kicked off its Echo hardware event in Seattle today by rattling off a list of new privacy features to assuage its smart home customers' concerns.
First, users will have a few direct privacy-focused voice commands at their disposal. You can ask "Alexa, tell me what you heard" to hear what the assistant just recorded, or say "Alexa, delete what I just said" or "Alexa, delete everything I said today" to wipe all the data recorded.
Later this year, users will get an even more accusatory command: the ability to ask "Alexa, why would you do that?" to get an explanation for any action the voice assistant took of its own volition.
As for recording storage, Amazon confirmed it will provide an opt-out from having human annotators listen to customers' voice recordings. Amazon and other companies—including Apple, Google, and Microsoft—use these human reviewers for "quality assurance" to improve accuracy, they say.
In addition, the company plans to add an auto-delete feature to wipe all voice recordings after three or 18 months depending on customer preference. Amazon had been storing customers' recording data with no expiration date, or until the customer choses to delete them.
Amazon has also come under fire lately for the data-sharing practices of its smart home security company Ring. Today, Amazon announced a new Home mode coming to the Ring app later this year that will disable recording in Ring cameras while the user is at home.