Amazon confirms: Alexa stores its users' voices without time limit

Amazon has admitted to keeping audio recordings of users of the Alexa voice assistant, for the purposes of AI improvements, but not only. This revelation actually initially came from a request from Senator Chris Coons. The latter sent a letter to Jeff Bezos last May. In it, he asks how long the voices recorded by Alexa are kept on Amazon servers, from Echo devices in particular, but not only, and for what purposes this data can be used.

The senator imposed a response limit of June 30. And it was two days before this date that Amazon's vice president of public policy, Brian Huseman, spoke on the subject.

The latter claims that Amazon keeps all audio recordings captured by Alexa,without duration limits. Recordings are only deleted if the user requests deletion of their data themselves.

But that's not all, some recordings would be left intact, even though the user has done everything possible to ask Amazon to forget them. This is the case, for example, for voices recorded via the new Amazon Dot Kids, intended for children. This device is already the subject of a complaint in the USA, supported by various privacy protection associations.

Concerning the data collected by Alexa, such as a pizza order, a launch of a Spotify playlist, a weather query or a traffic-related question, among many other possibilities, Amazon has not given details on their sharing to third-party companies. The Seattle-based giant has nevertheless confirmed that the data is used to improve Alexa artificial intelligence and the transcription of audio recordings.

Last information delivered by Amazon, and not least, no audio recording is made anonymous. Everything is associated with the user's Amazon account.

But while this could be chilling and even worrying given the issue of private data, the Amazon Echo supporting Alexa is enjoying real success.

In your opinion, has the company led by Jeff Bezos already gone too far in disrespecting privacy?

Editor-in-chief for iPhon.fr. Pierre is like Indiana Jones, looking for the lost iOS trick. Also a long-time Mac user, Apple devices hold no secrets for him. Contact: pierre[a]iphon.fr.