First it was Google, then came the turn of Apple – and now, Amazon is under scrutiny, bowing down to the pressure from the EU over issues concerning humans reviewing recordings from their very own respective digital assistants. As far as both Apple and Google go, both the companies have proceeded to pause the human review – however, Alexa has taken upon the decision to give users the opt-out setting.
In any case, Amazon already had a pretty clear set of privacy policies when compared with either Google or Apple. This came as a result of the company setting up a privacy portal after the last round of scandals over Alexa voice recordings revealed quite a lot.
Though Amazon does not actually give users the option to delete their voice recordings whenever they want, however, even with these new settings in mind, Amazon will be able to store recordings of your voice by default. In such a case where you want to delete them, then you will have to periodically go right into your Alexa settings and then go do it all by yourself.
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Privacy is one of the more sensitive topics that the digital industry now has to take care of. In the on-going scandal concerning Apple where news came by a whistle-blower as to how the company’s Siri goes on to compromise users’ privacy, Apple has since responded by pausing the human review of utterances entirely across the globe. On the other hand, Google has actually proceeded by pausing it in the EU, while Amazon, like mentioned above, has taken upon the strategy to just offer this more clearer opt-out.
As evident as it could be, it is clear that all three companies have adopted a rather different approach as to how they go about a situation involving the threat that human reviewers pose and we can only hope that these three, and also other companies who might possess the power to compromise privacy end up at one place : more clearer disclosures, transparency when it comes to managing data, and finally, the ability to not have your voice automatically stored in the case where you don’t want it to be.
