Amazon Is Using Your Conversations With Alexa to Train AI

Would've been newsworthy if it wasn't the case

Of course they are. If you are surprised by this, then you are an idiot.

I work for Amazon.
This has been the case for many years. Amazon has used AI in Alexa and other services for many years as primary providers, and has told it's users it's used it's data for as long. We're talking from close to inception here, so 6-7 years, at least. Hell, LLM's aren't even new to most big tech companies!
I'm all for privacy, but if you want privacy then you probably shouldn't have a fucking tin can in your house that actions every conversation to a cloud service!
- Not every conversation, just statements following a detected wake word.
- I bought an Alexa but I disable the mic. Do they still listen?
They literally tell you when you go through setup.
- Well,that's the thing with "news" right? Just scattered information without context for clicks. If people start connecting the dots and things make sense, most of the news become pretty uninteresting and would not evoke anger, prompting you to click and share.
Harsh but true. We need some tough love in our relationship with tech.
- Because most people are idiots.

Yeah, that's kinda the point. They literally tell you that your voice interactions are used to improve the service.

I gItz NufIN Ti HIIIDE

I will be the last person to not have a smart home. There will be a banner over the doorway: "Welcome to Stupid House".

There will be a small cover charge.

You can have a privacy-first smart home. I have. I run Home Assistant in a docker container. No external services/plugins. My smart doorbell streams to my local nvr. If my internet is down, everything keeps working. And it's not even that hard anymore. It's become a lot easier over the last 2-3 years. Still not for non-techie users, but a lot better.
- That sounds pretty reasonable.
  Edit: Still kind of want to call my place "Stupid House" for myriad other reasons
- I'm not tech illiterate by any means, and everything after "home assistant" in that post is Greek to me
- Have any resources to get started with that? Been looking into security systems but don't fully trust nest/ring/simplisafe etc
- Teach me your ways. Setting up Home Assistant seems like such a daunting task. I'm stalling converting my devices into it. Any tips for a beginner?
I'm with you. I hate how they expect me to control everything from my phone or with voice commands. I'm fine walking to a light switch or walking to the thermostat.
- There's a middle ground as well. I refuse to put Alexa or OK Google or whatever on any of my stuff, but I run home-assistant with zigbee smart devices. My entire setup runs completely cut off from the internet. I could in theory even air gap it, although that's a little overkill. It's a "smart" house, but one I'm 100% in control of.
- The last thing I want is to talk to a computer. Buttons are fine. The roboto phone customer service is bad enough.
- I’m fine walking to a light switch or walking to the thermostat.
  When the hallway light was left on again it's really damn nice to simply say "Turn Off Hallway Light" while staying under my nice warm covers. It's also pretty swank to have the garage lights turn on when the garage door opens then turn themselves back off 5 minutes after the garage door closes. Someone left their closet light on? No problemo, my automation catches that and shuts it off.
  Window coverings like blinds and drapes? Yeah, those are opening and closing automatically based on the position of the sun, even when I'm not home to do it. Did it rain while I was at work? Automation keeps my sprinklers from running tonight.
  All of that is being done by Home Assistant and absolutely no Internet is required to make it work.
When skynet comes online, I'll die quickly, being mopped to death. You'll have to struggle in the post apocalyptic hellscape where humans fight robots with A-10s for some reason.

haven't we all known this since product launch ?

- What's fucked up is if you try to regulate it and make these companies have data retention policies. It creates a giant moat around them where no newcomer can have a chance to compete.
- that's fair. i work with data for a living so that probably biases my perspective

not sure how much they’ll learn from me screaming “you dumb bitch” at it

Yep, most of my interactions lately that are non trivial are just sigh-inducing. Smart assistant my ass.

Noooo reaaally?

The new Amazon AI is going to be remarkably foul-mouthed. Every time it screws up (and it screws up a lot) I have to curse at it to make it shut up so it can hear the command again.

I brings me joy when I tell her "Alexa, shut up you dumb bitch" and then she responds with that sad minor tone dejected sound.

So who thinks this conversation here on lemmy isn’t being used to train an AI? Maybe not right now but later?

Sure the relatively small size of lemmy means it might not be scooped up and trained on. But the point still stands. All that is publicly online is food for the big-corp AI builders. And while Alexa invading your home privacy is obviously a shitty thing, I’m not sure we’ve all thought through the new relationship between us, the internet and the big AIs.

Well I know I have no expectation of privacy here, but I'd rather open source LLMs train on my words along with proprietary ones, than some company hoarding information and selling it to each other.
The only thing an AI trained on Lemmy will ever be able to do is discuss the merits of socialism and talk about Linux lol

We always knew that. What they don't tell you is your phone is also secretly listening. "Ok Google" <- turn that thing off too

And none of it has paid off because Alexa is still super trash

I love being able to dictate a grocery list but god damn is she stupid.
Good luck asking for cream cheese and chive crackers without ending up with cream cheese as one item and chive crackers as another. Or worse peanut butter and honey crackers as peanut butter and then honey crackers
- "chive crackers with cream cheese"
  "honey crackers with peanut butter"
  ?

An always on microphone connected to a company that is mostly known to exploit their customers and employees! Say it ain't so!

Yeah, I realized these things are terrible about a year ago. So, I hacked them into computer speakers using some cheap amps and a 12 volt power supply.

Obviously. How else would it hear you say, "Alexa?"
I'd love a citation on this, outside of wakeword usage (a local device waiting for "Alexa* to begin recording).
- Source: their ass.
  Alexa devices use an onboard DSP to detect the wakeword and maintain a rolling audio buffer. On a positive match, the DSP wakes the main CPU which combines the saved buffer and any following speech and uploads it to the cloud where Alexa lives so she can try to figure out what you meant.
  No audio is uploaded without being triggered by a wakeword. Also, the "mute" button physically cuts power to the mic, and the indicator LED is hardwired to the power rail as a failsafe indicator.
Not going to get much out of me then, most of what Alexander hears is what's on the TV or music I listen to. If they want to train alexa on that, their fucked
What about just a firestick? That uses Alexa

It’ll be really good at telling people to shut the fuck up if it’s using my data for training.

These types of projects are driven by metrics, and teams have some kind of quota/goal that they need to reach by a certain date to keep the project on schedule. Bonuses or job security may be on the line here, and so you may see some desperate employees "going the extra mile" to reach their goals.

Relatedly, Alexa's voice activation sensitivity is essentially a tunable number. It can be changed to be more sensitive, so that it will activate more easily (e.g. maybe you say "Alex" instead of "Alexa"). The people who control this are likely on the team with that deadline, so the incentives are there to lower this value in order to collect more data by recording personal conversations "accidentally". Maybe a bad update goes out that causes Alexa to activate randomly, and they quickly fix it after a few days when they collected all the non-Alexa personal conversations they need for their AI.

That's maybe a bit too deep into the paranoia/tinfoil hat spectrum for some, but history has shown that you can't give big tech the benefit of the doubt. Especially when you see some of the documents from the Google trial, where executives discuss rolling back new features to improve arbitrary metrics in the short term so that they can get their bonuses for the quarter, even if it hurts consumers.

Is this a surprise to anyone?

This was already my understanding when I got the first pre-release one in 2014.

In that time, it has mainly learned how to"dim the living area lights to 50%" and "set the AC to 22 degrees". That is about 99% of it's use.

Wonder if that's helped it's AI much...

Do things on your own as long as you can

I don't necessarily disagree with you, but maybe you could tell me why?
- it is a link to another post with few, but not limited to, reasons

And Pokémon Go uses your location for its gameplay

That’s kind of how this shit works..

Who the fuck are buying these ? I really want to meet the person who has one of these in their home.

Hi I have one! The echo is actually a very useful smart speaker and produces good quality audio. Mainly I just use it to voice activate Spotify and for quick easy things like weather forecasts, trivia that comes up in conversation, and updates on package orders. Yes I realize it's probably spying on me. No I don't care that much.
- We either avoid the spying like the plague or we accept it into our homes. If we want a future with robots, those things are going to have microphones for ears, a speaker for a mouth, cameras for eyes, and some sort of smell detector for the nose. We're just in the training phase for that experience.
  Kids will adapt to it, older curmudgeons will try to stay away with their lamplight oil. I personally want a robot to take care of cooking and cleaning so I can enjoy other things in life.
  Yes, it's an ongoing struggle between convenience and privacy. I've noticed that the voices for privacy tend to be the loudest and angriest, yet they still choose to have cell phones and computers and complain on the Internet. Unless they're Amish or in the deep wilderness, AI will eventually know a lot more about them than they would like.
- Thats great. Try the google one as well. Its better than Alexa. I would say install one in the living room and second in in your bedroom. It'll be a perfect home🥰
I have 7 in my house. I have my lights, plant humidifier, TV, air filter, Aquarium equipment, and others all hooked up to them. You can run almost anything you need to just by using your voice.
Getting ready to watch something on TV? "Alexa it's movie time." Turns on the TV and Switches the input to the Shield and opens up our go to media app. Shuts off all lights in the house except the living room. Dims those to 10% and changes them to red. Just enough light to see your snacks and the remote by. Turns off the sump filter for the Aquariums in just the living room but leaves the in tank bubble filter going for better silence. All with 4 spoken words and no need to work with multiple remotes and apps in your phone.
That's just one example. We have an obscene amount of routines setup for nearly ecery scenario we have run across and adding new ones is easy.
Hell... We even have a routine where if you say "Alexa, do you know Desi naach?" It plays Naatu Naatu from every speaker in the house at full volume.
Show me a FOSS system as plug and play, powerful, and as EASY to use as Alexa and I'll drop Alexa in the trash tommorow and switch.
- Lol suckers born every minute
The best market for these will always be older people, and people with disabilities, both mental and physical. Voice interaction is a great interface when there is friction from a screen or physical input.
It's also useful for those with families, as you can use it for shopping reminders, as an intercom around your house, etc.
A crazy number of people are buying products with Alexa in them. I don't really get it to be honest. It seems like mostly just a novelty.
- I bought a phone mount for my car that had Alexa built in. The software fucked up after 2 weeks, but it's still the best physical design for a phone mount that I've found. So it's unplugged and got a dead battery and just holds my phone.
- So retarded! I've stopped buying anything that connects to internet. The only thing in my household that connects to internet is my PC and phone.