Amazon Alexa (Echo)

The main articles are:

• Smart Speakers Voice Assistants (Global Market)
• Smart speakers Voice assistants (Russian market)

Amazon Echo is a smart device. Controlled by voice and reacts to the word "Alexa."

Amazon Echo Device, (2016)

The device is a 24 cm high cylinder with seven built-in microphones at the top and acoustic speakers at the bottom. It is voice-controlled and reacts to the codeword "Alexa." After saying this word, the user's speech is recorded and sent to the "cloud" for analysis and reaction through the Amazon Alexa project.

The device is capable of limited speech interaction with the user, playing music, writing task lists, setting alarms, broadcasting podcasts, playing audiobooks and reading weather forecasts, traffic jam information, etc. It can control several smart devices as a central node of the home automation system.

What does Alexa do?

When Amazon describes Alexa as a "personal assistant," they don't stipulate most of its capabilities. At the simplest level, Alexa receives and interprets voice commands, for example, to prompt for time or read news headlines.

But for all this to be possible, a lot of interesting things are happening in the background. First, your commands are recorded and sent via Internet to Amazon for processing. This whole process takes a split second, and it is the result of years of complex work that Amazon developers have successfully done.

Much more than you think

In fact, Alexa is only the "face" of a powerful and serious intellectual system. Every time you talk to Alexa, the recordable team is saved to Amazon for at least a few months.

Artificial intelligence systems like Alexa rely on vast amounts of data that allow them to "learn" and improve. Alexa constantly self-refines, analyzing and testing all these records. Amazon developers also use these records to expand Alexa's functionality: for example, by reporting changes to the score of a football match or offering time to watch a movie.

Used on more than 100 million devices worldwide, Alexa collects and processes a huge amount of information every day. That's why Amazon is capable of improving its artificial intelligence capabilities so quickly.

Extensible platform

To make technology more useful, Amazon also allows other diggers and individuals to create functionality for Alexa. Known as "Alexa Skills," such extensions are a semblance of smartphone apps that perform specific tasks.

2021

For 5 years, the smart speaker division brought Amazon losses of $25 billion

Between 2017 and 2021, Amazon's division specializing in devices with Alexa's intelligent voice assistant suffered losses of approximately $25 billion. Such data were released at the end of July 2024.

According to Amazon itself, by May 2023, the company had sold more than 500 million diverse devices with Alexa assistant. These are Echo smart speakers, Kindle tablets, Fire TV digital media players, Blink smart security cameras, etc. However, according to The Wall Street Journal, the Alexa division of devices has never managed to create a constant stream of profits. For example, according to the results of 2022 alone, the losses of this group were estimated at $10 billion.

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Bloomberg News

The negative performance of the division is partly due to the fact that during the initial stages of Alexa's development, the team "did not have a schedule for making a profit" when bringing products to market. In 2019, the then senior vice president of Amazon Devices, Dave Limp, who left the company in 2023, said that the division "does not need to make money when customers purchase the device." Profit was planned to be made from related services, including in the field of e-commerce. However, users typically apply gadgets with Alexa for free services such as getting weather forecasts or certain information rather than making big purchases.

Business Insider, citing information received from Amazon employees, notes that "almost all plans to monetize Alexa have failed." One former employee at the company called Alexa a "colossal failure" and a "missed opportunity." It previously said that while Echo devices are among the best-selling items on Amazon, most gadgets sell at cost.^[1]

Alexa invited a 10-year-old girl to insert a coin into an outlet

Alexa suggested that a 10-year-old girl insert a coin into an outlet. This became known on December 28, 2021.

The proposal came after the girl asked Alexa to "find a trial."

Amazon has urgently updated its Alexa voice assistant after artificial intelligence recommended a 10-year-old girl touch a coin on the teeth of a half-inserted charger fork.

Connect the charger for phone about half to the outlet, then touch the penny to the open contacts, - said the virtual assistant.

As the girl's mother said on Twitter, they have recently been doing various physical exercises, and the girl wanted to find something else. It was then that the "smart" column offered to take part in the test, which she "found on the Web."

The dangerous activity, known as the "penny trial," began to gain popularity on TikTok and other social media platforms about a year ago. Many metals conduct electricity, and inserting them into live electrical outlets can cause electric shock, fire, and other damage.

The girl, according to her mother, was "too smart to do something like that" and did not follow the lead of artificial intelligence. According to Amazon representatives, the problem was fixed immediately after Alexa became aware of it^[2].

Pre-integration with Qualcomm Snapdragon Automotive Cockpit 3rd and 4th generation platform

Qualcomm Technologies and Amazon announced a joint project of companies to pre-integrate the Alexa Custom Assistant service with the Qualcomm Snapdragon Automotive Cockpit platform. Read more here.

2019

How to send silent voice commands to digital assistants using a laser

On November 5, 2019, it became known that a group of specialists from the Tokyo University of Telecommunications (Japan) and the University of Michigan (USA ) developed a way to send silent voice commands to digital assistants using a laser.

It all started when Tokyo Telecommunication University researcher Takeshi Sugawara discovered the strange behavior of his iPad. As it turned out, when the tablet was exposed to a powerful laser on the microphone, for some unknown reason it perceived it as sound. Changing the intensity of the sinusoid laser over time at 1,000 oscillations per second, Sugawara created a high-frequency sound wave that the iPad microphone picked up and transformed into an electrical signal.

Six months later, Sugawara and a team of University of Michigan researchers turned the above photoacoustic effect into something more serious. Scientists have learned with the help of a laser to "talk" with any device capable of receiving voice commands, including with, smartphones "smart" speakers Amazon Echo, Google Home devices with support for video calls Facebook Portal , etc. Researchers were able to send them light commands at a distance of hundreds of meters and use them to open garages, shop Internet in, etc.

As found during the experiments, if you direct a laser to the microphone and change its intensity at the exact frequency, the light will somehow cause the microphone membrane to vibrate at the same frequency. Over time, the researchers changed the intensity of the laser so that it coincided with the frequency of the human voice. As a result, the microphone transformed light waves into an electric signal like sound waves, and received silent voice commands. If you use an infrared laser, then an attack on the microphone of devices will be not only inaudible, but also invisible^[3].

McDonald's accepts job applications through Amazon and Google voice assistants

In late September 2019, McDonald's announced a new initiative in which owners of Amazon's Alexa or Google Assistant devices can submit job applications through voice assistants. The company sees the program, dubbed Apply Thru, as another way to attract young people to work. Read more here.

Amazon Echo has a function to disable the "wiretapping" of voice commands

Users of Amazon Echo smart speakers were able to disable the function of listening to their messages by company employees. Amazon also allowed messages that were sent for processing to be deleted.

Users can turn off the transmission of audio files to Amazon employees on their own in the settings of the speaker or smartphone, reports The Verge in August.

Users can also now delete messages if they were previously sent for processing. Nevertheless, the service will continue to collect data and users must independently control this process.

Amazon smart speakers are collected by schoolchildren at night

On August 8, 2019, it became known that Chinese schoolchildren are used in the production of "smart" speakers Amazon with numerous violations of labor laws. The Guardian was told about this by factory workers. The publication also received information from documents intended only for internal use in the company Foxconn (Amazon's assembly partner). electronic engineers More. here

Amazon voice assistant began to give advice from the Ministry of Health

In mid-July 2019, the UK's National Health Service (NHS) announced a collaboration with Amazon. Through their joint efforts, Alexa's voice assistant will be able to provide reliable medical advice to users. Read more here.

Amazon: Recordings of conversations with "smart" speakers are stored forever

In early July 2019, Amazon officially confirmed it was not deleting Alexa's voice recordings and customer data after speaking to a virtual assistant. If users do not manually delete them, recordings of conversations with smart speakers can be stored indefinitely, that is, forever.

A request to clarify Alexa's work with personal data was conveyed by US Senator Chris Coons after the CNET investigation. In May 2019, CNET accused Amazon of storing text transcripts of voice recordings on servers even after users deleted their recordings. In response to the senator's request, Amazon clarified what data it stores and what it does not.

Amazon officially confirms it doesn't delete Alexa customers' voice recordings and data after conversation with virtual assistant

However, CNET suspects that transcripts of talks with the voice assistant are not being removed from all Amazon servers. Moreover, sometimes this data is transmitted to third parties: for example, when a user contacts a third-party service, calling a taxi or ordering pizza.

the company saves records of other requests: for example, when a user asks Alexa to set an alarm for several days, create a reminder, or mark a future meeting on the calendar. As Amazon representatives explained, with the removal of the audio file, the associated data will also be deleted, which is why Alexa will not be able to fulfill its task.

The company explained why it uses transcripts: This data helps train and improve Alexa's machine learning systems, as well as provide customers with a direct report on its performance. In addition, Amazon confirmed that the system stops recording as soon as the customer stops talking, as indicated by the blue indicator on the Echo device.

Although the senator was pleased with the company's response, he will continue to work in this direction to resolve the remaining issues.^[4]

Amazon's smart speakers now protect against thieves

In mid-May 2019, Amazon's smart speakers learned to protect the house from thieves and fires. The Alexa Guard function was announced, which allows Echo smart speakers to detect signs of an emergency - a voice assistant left in a special mode now responds to the sound of glass being broken and other signs of thieves invading the apartment and sends a notification to the owner. Read more here.

Integration in Poly Voyager 4200 UC

On April 18, 2019, Plantronic announced that in order to help employees be more productive in the office and on the move, the Voyager 4200 UC headset will be equipped with an Alexa voice assistant. Read more here.

Thousands of Amazon employees listen to what people say to voice assistant

On April 10, 2019, it was reported that thousands of Amazon employees were eavesdropping on users of the Alexa voice assistant. The company specifically recruits such employees to improve the operation of its service.

A separate team listens to voice messages recorded by Amazon Echo smart speakers in homes and offices. Seven people who were involved in such a program told Bloomberg about this.

Decryption and analysis of speech recorded by smart speakers is carried out by Amazon staff and freelance employees around the world. In particular, there are such workers in the USA, Costa Rica, India and Romania. They work 9 hours a day and process up to 1000 audio recordings during their shift.

Amazon hires thousands of employees worldwide to work to improve Alexa voice assistant

With all employees who listen to users' voice messages, Amazon enters into a non-disclosure agreement. The company confirmed to the publication the existence of such personnel, but assured that customers are guaranteed complete security and confidentiality of data.

We decrypt a small sample of Alexa voice recordings to improve the quality of service. This information helps us train our speech recognition systems so Alexa can better understand you and work equally well for all of our customers, an Amazon spokesperson told Bloomberg.

The company's specialists have to listen to a variety of recordings - from a girl singing poorly in her soul to a crying child who calls for help. Two staff members heard screams they assumed had taken place in the sexual assault. This was reported to the management, but then did not take any measures and indicated to subordinates that "interfering in such things is not Amazon's task." 

Sometimes teams face frightening or traumatic records, so they are given psychological help. Nevertheless, the company does not seek to intervene in such situations, calling for such policies and its employees.

For employees listening to recordings from Amazon Echo, they created a chat where they can ask colleagues for help parsing slurred phrases or discuss funny recordings.

Building in Budapest, home to Amazon office that employs Alexa wiretapping staff

In promotional materials and data privacy documents, Amazon does not explicitly indicate that people listen to recordings of conversations with the Alexa service.

We use your requests to Alexa to teach our speech recognition and natural language understanding systems, Amazon's website says in its FAQ section.

In Alexa settings, you can disable the use of voice recordings to develop new features. Bloomberg journalists received a screenshot from a program with which Amazon employees who listen to user recordings work. Judging by this image, department employees do not have any data that would allow them to identify who owns the messages. However, together with the entry, the employee receives the subscriber's account number, the serial number of his device, as well as the person's name - this data may be enough to determine the user's identity.

Sometimes employees hear a discussion of personal data of users, including banking. In this case, they mark the dialogs as "critical data" and move on to the next file.

According to an informed interlocutor of Bloomberg, the Alexa service sends random small voice recordings to Amazon for analysis. Some employees are instructed to compare what the voice assistant recognized with what the user actually said, as well as comment on the effectiveness of the interaction between the machine and the person. Sometimes Alexa is wrong, especially if it encounters a new slang, dialect, or recognizes a language other than English.^[5]

2018

Court orders Amazon to reveal data recorded by 'smart' speaker during murder of two women

On November 9, 2018, a New Hampshire (USA) court ordered Amazon to transfer audio recordings from an Amazon Echo speaker located in the house where two women were killed. Amazon said it would provide the information only when it received legally relevant documents.

In January 2017, the bodies of Christina Sullivan and Jenna Pelligrini with multiple stab wounds were found under the porch of a house in Farmington. Timothy Verill, a murder suspect, was taken into custody in November 2017 but has pleaded not guilty and will stand trial in May 2019.

Court orders Amazon to hand over audio recordings from Amazon Echo speaker in home where two women were killed

After a house search, police took away an Amazon Echo "smart" speaker. Prosecutors believe there may be records made between January 27 and 29, 2017 servers , and stored on Amazon that "contain evidence of the commission of a crime against Ms. Sullivan, including assault and possible movement of the body from the kitchen." Amazon was also obliged to provide information about any devices that were associated with the column at that time.

In a statement to the Vox website, an Amazon spokesperson noted that they would not "disclose user information until a proper valid and mandatory requirement is provided," and that "Amazon objects to redundant or otherwise non-unacceptable requirements per se." At the same time, the company did not say whether it would transfer the data if a corresponding petition was filed with the court or would challenge the decision.^[6][7]

Recording porn in a brothel using an Amazon speaker

Sheri's Ranch, one of Nevada's most famous brothels, the only U.S. state where prostitution is fully legalized, has organized a video recording room in which customers can film their sexual adventures with Alexa's voice assistant. This was reported in August 2018 by The Sun.

In order to start the video recording, the client needs to give Amazon the team standing in the room to the "smart" Echo column: "Alexa, begin the porn star experience!" (translated from English. "Alexa, start the porn star mode!"). After that, in a specially equipped room, light-proof curtains are automatically lowered, lighting is turned on and video filming begins.

Sheri's Ranch, one of Nevada's most famous brothels, the only U.S. state where prostitution is fully legalized, has set up a video recording room where customers can film their sexual adventures with Alexa's voice assistant

This is our most innovative offering to date. No film crew and editing, only the client and the courtesan he chose. They themselves are responsible for directing and play the main roles, - the owner of the institution Dena told The Sun.

The room has four cameras, including on the ceiling, which are filming from different angles. The shooting angle changes the computer connected to the system in any order. He also automatically edits the video after the shooting is completed and saves it to the SD card that the client receives.

One of the employees of Sheri's Ranch named Alice said that visitors to the institution often ask to record them on video, but earlier it was not easy to do this, since they had to use a smartphone.

Now you can not worry about anything and just enjoy great sex. The video for us will automatically shoot a room equipped with technology, - added the courtesan.

There is no fixed price for creating porn videos. As the owner of the brothel explained, all the girls are civilian workers, so everyone can request a service as much as they see fit.^[8]

Integration with KMS Lighthouse

KMS Lighthouse, a knowledge management software manufacturer, announced on June 22, 2018 that it could integrate its Knowledge Management System Lighthouse solution for knowledge management with Alexa, Amazon's voice assistant. Read more here.

Is Amazon Echo a security risk you invite to your home?

When Amazon Echo 'secretly' recorded one woman's personal conversation and emailed it to one of her friends, the issue of smart devices and security was finally brought to the public's attention. Despite the harmlessness of this conversation, the woman deliberately did not instruct her device to record her conversation, and even more so to someone to send it^[9]

After investigating this incident, Amazon engineers found that this was not a hack, but a strange combination of events and keywords that were perceived by the device as a guide to action. In fact, the always-on Alexa smart assistant built into the device "heard" four registered commands that were uttered during a conversation in the same room.

Amazon was quick to clarify that this sequence of events was extremely rare, but similar situations could still arise in the future.

So how can you protect yourself from a similar situation with your own Amazon Echo device?

How to avoid a similar incident with your own Amazon Echo device

Alexa constantly records and analyzes the conversations of surrounding people, waiting for certain "trigger" keywords, which are commands for it to perform certain actions. One such word is "Alexa." This means that the only way to make sure your private conversations and personal data are not collected is to completely get rid of this smart device.

If that option doesn't work for you, then there are a number of tips to help you use your own Amazon Echo more safely.

1. Don't share your address book. The first time you set up Alexa, you'll be asked to share your address book with it from your mobile phone. Then you can dictate messages and emails to your friends using Alexa. If you do not share your address book, then Alexa will not be able to "accidentally" send personal records to your contacts. If you have already shared your address book with your device, you will need to contact Amazon and ask them to delete this information.

2. Turn up the volume. When Alexa identifies a command, the device usually tells you what it's starting to do now. For example, ask Alexa to play some song and you'll hear "Now playing...." If you set the volume level to low enough, then you will not hear these phrases of the device about what it is starting to do. Make sure you set enough volume to hear these phrases.

3. Mute if not using. The only way Alexa stops "eavesdropping" is to turn on silent mode by pressing the button on the side. In this case, the built-in microphone will be disabled, and the light ring at the top of the device will turn red. The only thing is that later, if necessary, you will first need to turn on your device if you want to give it some command.

4. Change your word for "wake up." Echo constantly waits for its "awakening" word-command - the default word is "Alexa." Just in case, you can change this word, but we recommend that you choose such a word so that it cannot be called by mistake. It is better not to use words such as "Amazon," "Echo" or "Puffinstuff" as such a word.

5. Choose your words carefully. The Amazon Echo is like a surveillance device that collects potentially sensitive personal data, whether you want it or not. Therefore, you should be very careful when choosing the words you say next to your device (or other smart devices) if you do not want your secrets to fall into the hands of strangers.

Church starts using Alexa voice assistant for prayers

At the end of May 2018, it became known that the Church of England began to use the Alexa voice assistant to read prayers, answer questions on Christian topics and help users find information about upcoming church events and their locations.

As reported on the website of the Church of England, in order to take advantage of these Alexa opportunities, you need to give the voice assistant the command to open the Church of England section.

Church of England offered to use audio assistant for prayers

After this phrase, the application will offer prayer resources and will be able to read various prayers, including "Our Father," morning and evening prayers, blessings before eating, and others. The service will also be able to expand users' knowledge of the Christian faith and answer questions about the Bible, God, Jesus Christ, Christianity, the Church of England, etc.

In addition, with the help of Alexa, you can learn about the location of churches and the events taking place in them.

The press service of the Church of England noted that the emergence of new opportunities in the AI assistant Alexa is only the first stage of a large-scale project implemented in conjunction with church publishing houses Digital and Church House Publishing, as well as developers of Aimer Media Ltd. In the future, it is planned to appear the same functions in the smart speakers Google Home and Apple HomePod.^[10]

We are very happy to present today new Alexa opportunities, with the help of which parishioners and those who are interested in faith issues will be able to connect with God in a convenient way for them and at a convenient time for them, "said Archbishop of York John Sentamu, who demonstrated Alexa's capabilities in a YouTube video.

Home smart devices are used in a quarter of British households, the archbishop said, so following the transformation of the Church of England's national websites, this fast-growing destination has been identified as a priority for development.^[11]

Researchers have learned how to send Amazon Echo inaudible to human teams

UC Berkeley researchers have presented a method for sending hidden commands to voice assistants that are inaudible to humans. With its help, the researchers managed to introduce hidden commands for the Amazon Echo smart audio speaker directly into a music record or spoken text and force it to make online purchases. According to the researchers, no evidence of the use of the method they developed was found in real life, but it is only a matter of time, writes the New York Times^[12].

The attack is based on a difference in human and artificial intelligence speech recognition. Speech recognition systems, as a rule, translate each heard sound into a letter, from which words and phrases are then composed. By making minor changes to the audio file, the researchers were able to replace the sounds that the system was supposed to hear with elusive sounds for the human ear, which acquired a new meaning after translating them into words and phrases.

According to Amazon representatives, the company has taken appropriate measures to ensure the security of its smart speaker. Google also claims that the Assistant voice assistant has features that block undetectable audio commands. The products of both companies have voice recognition technologies that prevent certain commands from being executed if they were not said by the voice of the owner of the device.

2015

Amazon has been developing Echo and Amazon's Alexa assistant service in a subsidiary Lab126 presumably since 2010.

Since June 23, 2015, the product has been available to everyone in the United States. In the UK and Germany - since September 2016. Amazon's Alexa voice assistant can be added to third-party devices and supports integration with services from other companies.

The Amazon Alexa device and service is perceived and communicated only in English.

Echo is often called a robot, but in general this thing is more like an ordinary vase. Hidden inside is a computer that is constantly connected to the Internet and can recognize the human voice. Echo listens to what they say around, but does nothing until he hears the code word. Then he begins to analyze what a person said and tries to fulfill what is asked of him: this is how he plays music, searches for answers to questions, makes purchases in online stores, quotes jokes, etc. This device has been on the market for the third year and during this time has become a bestseller, having sold millions of copies. There are, of course, analogues (for example, Google Home, as well as "assistants" in smartphones: Siri, Cortana and others). When buying a device, a citizen actually enters into an agreement with the company serving him (in this case, Amazon) for the provision of information services. Therefore, the information that the company collects turns out to be simply "consumable": it is not protected by law, can be provided to at least the police, used as evidence in court hearings^[13]

Notes

• Product information is provided as of January 11, 2017.