US Senator Christopher Coons asked Amazon last May to provide details on the life of voice recordings captured by smart speakers.
Sometimes, just ask ... Last May, Chris Coons, Democratic Senator and member of the Judiciary Committee of the Upper House of the US Congress, sent a missive to Amazon. He asked for additional information on the fate of confidentiality and security of data collected by smart speakers equipped with the personal assistant Alexa. He who supports Joe Biden in the US presidential primary has not been disappointed with the answer.
Amazon confirms the retention of text transcripts
Chris Coons' request was motivated by a CNET survey that revealed that voice recordings are kept by Amazon, except when users delete them manually. The US media reported that the company can very well keep text transcripts of conversations permanently.
In its response to the Democratic Senator, published on July 3, 2019, Amazon has confirmed CNET's assertions, stating that it effectively stores voice recordings indefinitely, at least until users decide to delete them. This means that Amazon has not programmed any automatic deletion of stored conversations.
The problem of third party access to conversations
While Coons " appreciates the fact that Amazon responded quickly " to his concerns, the response from Jeff Bezos' firm leaves open the possibility that transcripts of voice conversations between users and Alexa are not necessarily all deleted from servers. Amazon, even in the case where a user expressly requests the deletion of a record.
Amazon reserves the right to retain certain interactions related to Alexa's skills, to which some third party developers may have access. The question is therefore not definitively decided and no answer has been given concerning the reuse by third parties of these data.
For the company, keeping text transcripts allows it to improve its machine learning systems in order to reinforce the interactions proposed by Alexa. The snake is still biting its tail ...
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