Amazon has team listening to, recording what users tell Alexa, Bloomberg says

Amazon employs thousands of people globally to help improve the Alexa digital assistant powering the company’s line of Echo devices, and this team listens to voice recordings captured in Echo owners’ homes and offices, Matt Day, Giles Turner, and Natalia Drozdiak of Bloomberg report. The team transcribes the recordings, annotates them, and then feeds them back into the software in an effort to cut down on gaps in the assistant’s understanding of human speech and help it respond better to commands, the authors say. The team of people listening and processing the recordings includes a mix of contractors and full-time Amazon employees who operate in outposts from Boston to Costa Rica, India, and Romania, according to Bloomberg, citing the people, who signed nondisclosure pacts prohibiting them from speaking publicly about the program. Members of the team each parse as many as 1,000 audio clips per daily nine-hour shift, the report’s authors say, citing two workers based at Amazon’s Bucharest office.

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