7 ms·

What I discovered when I asked Amazon to tell me everything Alexa had heard

69 points by robaato 1y ago

Animats 1y ago
And, of course, Homeland Security gets to look at all that data.
- atdaemon 1y ago
  Source? Thanks!
  - akimbostrawman 1y ago
    i know this is HN but its 2025 and i find it hard to believe anybody who was not in a coma for the last decades would need concrete proof that for-profit corporations in the business of personals data have deals with government agencies for surveillance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora
throwaway81523 1y ago
They shouldn't call it a home speaker. A home speaker is what we used to call a radio or hi-fi system. Alexa is a home microphone.
- happytoexplain 1y ago
  They don't - they call it a smart speaker.
  - HPsquared 1y ago
    "Smart" = Adtech. Applies to TVs, fridges, anything really.
- vezycash 1y ago
  Call it little snitch
  - LoganDark 1y ago
    Man, don't give Little Snitch a bad name.
- Bender 1y ago
  I believe more appropriate would be to bring back all the WWII posters such as "Loose Lips Sink Ships" and "When you talk to Alexa you are sleeping with Hitler." They just need AI to give them a modern spin. I bet someone here could do it.
threeducks 1y ago
> But we have two Echo devices in our household and the data shows whether a request came from the Echo Plus in the kitchen or the original Echo on our daughter Coco’s bedside table, where it has sat since around her ninth birthday. [...] So I now know that it was Coco who wanted to know what it is to be omnisexual and what omniscient means. Doesn't it feel wrong to the author to snoop through that private information? And publishing it in a news article definitely crosses a line.
- thrance 1y ago
  I mean, so is committing every sound ever heard through that microphone to a database used to train a voodoo doll of their daughter to better guess what she might be able to buy next.
  - jxjnskkzxxhx 1y ago
    Oh shit.... I never realized until now that's exactly what the point of Alexa is. I thought the point was like a different UI to Amazon. As in "being able to buy by clicking OR sounding must lead to a strictly larger number of sales than being able to buy by clicking only". So you can imagine my confusion on people telling me that Alexa isn't a good UI. Of course. The point is to snoop on people to make better "recommendations". Dystopian.
    - techjamie 1y ago
      It can be both. Saying "Alexa, buy eggs" is a lot quicker and easier than loading up Amazon, finding the eggs you like which will probably be the top result for you, and clicking buy (or even Buy Now). Instead, it already knows your preferences in eggs anyway, so just by telling it, you can impulsively buy the eggs without even stopping what you're doing. Then they get all that juicy "accidental activation" data on top of that.
      - daveguy 1y ago
        If only Alexa could be trusted to buy something as seemingly simple as eggs.
andix 1y ago
Amazon really keeps recordings of all the things you ever said to Alexa. That's wild (I didn't know before).
- alok-g 1y ago
  If I recall correctly, Alexa app has some settings to change that.
rainsford 1y ago
There's some weird anthropomorphization with Alexa and similar voice assistant type devices that seems based less on the data being collected and more on the fact that you're speaking to it instead of typing in queries. This article definitely leans very heavily into that perspective, but doesn't seem to realize it or reflect on why. As an example, the part of the article about questions his daughter has asked Alexa reflects things no different than ones you might type into a search engine. But he describes it as "Coco’s relationship with Alexa...", a term I'm confident he wouldn't use to describe her typing the same things into Google. You could maybe make the argument that it's different because people ask Alexa things they wouldn't just search for, but that potentially interesting distinction is unexplored by the author. I'm not aware of anything covering this, but I think there's some interesting potential looking into how humans see technology as more human if they can communicate with it in a human way, regardless of whether or not it otherwise displays aspects of humanity. Generative AI falls into this category too I think. People view it as way more intelligent than it actually is because you can sort of converse with it like a human.
- blendo 1y ago
  I’ve already gotten to the point where I talk into my iPhone rather than type for many interactions. I think Apple cannot currently associate my apple id with my queries.
- LoganDark 1y ago
  > I'm not aware of anything covering this, but I think there's some interesting potential looking into how humans see technology as more human if they can communicate with it in a human way, regardless of whether or not it otherwise displays aspects of humanity. Generative AI falls into this category too I think. People view it as way more intelligent than it actually is because you can sort of converse with it like a human. I don't know why, but certain types of people seem easily fooled into thinking that LLMs really are like a real person. I have to imagine that either these people don't actually need things that currently only a real person can provide, or they're just happy enough with what the LLM spits out to be unable to tell the difference. Which doesn't make any sense to me, because whenever I talk to an LLM, I can pretty easily tell that it's nowhere close to a real person. As an example, I never use LLMs for conversation, because speaking to one is not in any way fulfilling to me like speaking to another real person is. I usually use LLMs for creative writing instead, but they're terrible at things that haven't already been exactly seen in their training data. They're not nearly as generalizable as the media would have you believe. All they can do is spit out sentences that look like sentences from real stories, they don't actually have any conception of the story or visualization of the scene that they then can describe like a person would. They don't actually simulate any of the story or imagine anything like I do. I have to wonder if the people who are so fooled by LLMs are just non-autistic people. If non-autistic brains work based on patterns rather than how I work based on strict logic, that could explain why something that appears to show patterns of a person would then be perceived as a person to them. But I dunno, that suggests that non-autistic people are somehow generally simpler/dumber than autistics and I wouldn't want to just assume that.
aunty_helen 1y ago
Here I am trying to DMZ my cable modem because I don’t trust my isp and people are putting active microphones next to their daughter’s bedside. Smh
- pixxel 1y ago
  [dead]

69 points by robaato 1y ago

Animats 1y ago

And, of course, Homeland Security gets to look at all that data.

atdaemon 1y ago
Source? Thanks!
- akimbostrawman 1y ago
  i know this is HN but its 2025 and i find it hard to believe anybody who was not in a coma for the last decades would need concrete proof that for-profit corporations in the business of personals data have deals with government agencies for surveillance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora

throwaway81523 1y ago

They shouldn't call it a home speaker. A home speaker is what we used to call a radio or hi-fi system. Alexa is a home microphone.

happytoexplain 1y ago
They don't - they call it a smart speaker.
- HPsquared 1y ago
  "Smart" = Adtech. Applies to TVs, fridges, anything really.
vezycash 1y ago
Call it little snitch
- LoganDark 1y ago
  Man, don't give Little Snitch a bad name.
Bender 1y ago
I believe more appropriate would be to bring back all the WWII posters such as "Loose Lips Sink Ships" and "When you talk to Alexa you are sleeping with Hitler." They just need AI to give them a modern spin. I bet someone here could do it.

threeducks 1y ago

> But we have two Echo devices in our household and the data shows whether a request came from the Echo Plus in the kitchen or the original Echo on our daughter Coco’s bedside table, where it has sat since around her ninth birthday. [...] So I now know that it was Coco who wanted to know what it is to be omnisexual and what omniscient means. Doesn't it feel wrong to the author to snoop through that private information? And publishing it in a news article definitely crosses a line.

thrance 1y ago
I mean, so is committing every sound ever heard through that microphone to a database used to train a voodoo doll of their daughter to better guess what she might be able to buy next.
- jxjnskkzxxhx 1y ago
  Oh shit.... I never realized until now that's exactly what the point of Alexa is. I thought the point was like a different UI to Amazon. As in "being able to buy by clicking OR sounding must lead to a strictly larger number of sales than being able to buy by clicking only". So you can imagine my confusion on people telling me that Alexa isn't a good UI. Of course. The point is to snoop on people to make better "recommendations". Dystopian.
  - techjamie 1y ago
    It can be both. Saying "Alexa, buy eggs" is a lot quicker and easier than loading up Amazon, finding the eggs you like which will probably be the top result for you, and clicking buy (or even Buy Now). Instead, it already knows your preferences in eggs anyway, so just by telling it, you can impulsively buy the eggs without even stopping what you're doing. Then they get all that juicy "accidental activation" data on top of that.
    - daveguy 1y ago
      If only Alexa could be trusted to buy something as seemingly simple as eggs.

andix 1y ago

Amazon really keeps recordings of all the things you ever said to Alexa. That's wild (I didn't know before).

alok-g 1y ago
If I recall correctly, Alexa app has some settings to change that.

rainsford 1y ago

There's some weird anthropomorphization with Alexa and similar voice assistant type devices that seems based less on the data being collected and more on the fact that you're speaking to it instead of typing in queries. This article definitely leans very heavily into that perspective, but doesn't seem to realize it or reflect on why. As an example, the part of the article about questions his daughter has asked Alexa reflects things no different than ones you might type into a search engine. But he describes it as "Coco’s relationship with Alexa...", a term I'm confident he wouldn't use to describe her typing the same things into Google. You could maybe make the argument that it's different because people ask Alexa things they wouldn't just search for, but that potentially interesting distinction is unexplored by the author. I'm not aware of anything covering this, but I think there's some interesting potential looking into how humans see technology as more human if they can communicate with it in a human way, regardless of whether or not it otherwise displays aspects of humanity. Generative AI falls into this category too I think. People view it as way more intelligent than it actually is because you can sort of converse with it like a human.

blendo 1y ago
I’ve already gotten to the point where I talk into my iPhone rather than type for many interactions. I think Apple cannot currently associate my apple id with my queries.
LoganDark 1y ago
> I'm not aware of anything covering this, but I think there's some interesting potential looking into how humans see technology as more human if they can communicate with it in a human way, regardless of whether or not it otherwise displays aspects of humanity. Generative AI falls into this category too I think. People view it as way more intelligent than it actually is because you can sort of converse with it like a human. I don't know why, but certain types of people seem easily fooled into thinking that LLMs really are like a real person. I have to imagine that either these people don't actually need things that currently only a real person can provide, or they're just happy enough with what the LLM spits out to be unable to tell the difference. Which doesn't make any sense to me, because whenever I talk to an LLM, I can pretty easily tell that it's nowhere close to a real person. As an example, I never use LLMs for conversation, because speaking to one is not in any way fulfilling to me like speaking to another real person is. I usually use LLMs for creative writing instead, but they're terrible at things that haven't already been exactly seen in their training data. They're not nearly as generalizable as the media would have you believe. All they can do is spit out sentences that look like sentences from real stories, they don't actually have any conception of the story or visualization of the scene that they then can describe like a person would. They don't actually simulate any of the story or imagine anything like I do. I have to wonder if the people who are so fooled by LLMs are just non-autistic people. If non-autistic brains work based on patterns rather than how I work based on strict logic, that could explain why something that appears to show patterns of a person would then be perceived as a person to them. But I dunno, that suggests that non-autistic people are somehow generally simpler/dumber than autistics and I wouldn't want to just assume that.

aunty_helen 1y ago

Here I am trying to DMZ my cable modem because I don’t trust my isp and people are putting active microphones next to their daughter’s bedside. Smh

pixxel 1y ago
[dead]