
Amazon can't yet completely delete Alexa voice transcriptions - FrancesFinTech
https://www.zdnet.com/article/amazon-cant-yet-completely-delete-alexa-voice-transcriptions/
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emptybits

      s/can't/doesn't/
    

It's a company with the time, resources, and customer awareness to do this.
They _can_. They have chosen not to.

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uzero
Why people are acting surprised about this? To me it has been always more than
obvious that whatever you say to any of the internet connected “assistants”
will be stored and kept as long as the assistant owning company likes.

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whatshisface
There's a difference between "it's obvious that they're doing it" (which is
only true for people above a certain paranoia line) and "here, look at this
proof that they're doing it." There are plenty of things that are obvious to
me based on my idea of people's motivations and past behavior, but if I talk
to someone lower down on the paranoia spectrum they don't believe me - unless
I can point to evidence that they're actually doing it. (A fair thing to ask
for, after all.)

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skybrian
It seems like you're talking the difference between suspicion and proof?
Saying "it's obvious they're doing it" when you mean you suspect they're doing
it is just going to start an argument.

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whatshisface
I was using it in the sense of the parent comment, I.E. if you put $100 in a
room unsupervised with a career thief it's "obvious" that he'll walk out with
it. Another way of phrasing it would be, "anyone who isn't suspicious appears
negligent."

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void445be54d48a
So like probably the majority of useful text boxes everyone types into on the
internet. Great news, thanks for the info

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oulipo
This is why we are building 100% offline and private-by-design Voice AI at
[https://snips.ai](https://snips.ai), it is free for makers and works in
english, french, german, japanese, spanish, italian, and more coming!

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xiphias2
I don't see any guarantee that if the platform gets popular and the company
acquired, privacy would stay the same. I have seen the same pattern too many
times...

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gvand
Thanks to the sacrifice of these clueless users (or at least a good part of
them are) the era of offline assistants is near looking at what Google has
shown recently.

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JadeNB
> Thanks to the sacrifice of these clueless users (or at least a good part of
> them are) the era of offline assistants is near looking at what Google has
> shown recently.

I think _I 'm_ being clueless, but I can't figure out what this sentence
means. Is there a typo in it?

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gvand
I was referring, in a convolute way, to the fact that all the data collected
have been/will be used to train the models that will allow offline voice
recognition (like the one google has shown at i/o last week).

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astrea
I might be mistaken, but the reason we don't see offline recognition (amongst
other things) is hardware limitations, not the lack of training data. The
small onboard chip doesn't have that much compute power, so they offload to
more powerful Amazon/Google servers that can run the inference.

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JadeNB
> amongst other things

I think that this is an important point. Obviously there's more computing
power available in Apple/Google/whoever's data centres than on my device, and
I'm sure that is, or at least was, a concern; but I also don't believe that
they are indifferent to the utility of sitting on such a huge volume of user-
submitted, real-world data.

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la_barba
Which internet company isn't perma-storing any and all 'valuable' bits that
happen to be routed through their network?

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mey
In theory DuckDuckGo. Just because someone can, does not make it good/right.

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vbuwivbiu
is there a law regarding whether the presence of these bugs should be
disclosed when you are a guest in a business premises or someone's home ?

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jtdev
I can’t believe that people actually pay for these things... Alexa has always
seemed like a gimmick to me. I have an Ecobee smart thermostat that has
integrated Alexa, which I promptly disabled after installation.

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kowdermeister
What's wrong with gimmicks? Voice control itself is not a bad idea, the
interface to control your technology is something you are born with :)

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ravenstine
Gimmicks are short-lived for fundamental reasons. I'm going to sound like a
broken record but, as someone who has owned multiple Alexa devices and quit
their job to start a voice-UI business(didn't pan out), the current generation
of "smart speakers" are a joke when it comes to doing anything serious besides
asking for the weather or toggling light switches. I have no doubt that they
are useful to people in very limited ways, but they are still sold as being a
lot smarter than they really are. For what they provide, the privacy trade-off
is too great for me.

Alexa is a gimmick because it's a speech-to-text _command line_ , and it's
sold as being smart even though it's not. Since before I was a kid in the 90s,
there have been many attempts to revolutionize computing with speech-to-text
technology. Because speaking comes so naturally to us, it's easy to assume
that voice-activated anything is better than pushing buttons. In reality,
without intelligence and autonomy, lots of interfaces are made slightly
_worse_ with voice activation. For those who aren't visually impaired, the
ability to use voice to turn off lights barely even makes sense. Alexa
frequently gets things wrong and activates from sounds that aren't even close
to the wake-word. The ability to create lists is barely practical because it
so often can't understand a word, in which case the user has to go to the
Alexa app and manually punch in the item.

Voice control would be great if it were revolutionized, but it's hardly in a
different state than it was decades ago. The only two things that have changed
are improved speech synthesis and ample _cloud computing_. Because of this,
most people I know who own one barely use them beyond a select number of
features that are hard to get wrong like "Alexa, what's the weather?" or
"Alexa, what time is it?". My parents still sometimes use it to play
music(which I gave up on as a music fan), but it gets requests hilariously
wrong 1/5 times.

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umanwizard
"Besides [a bunch of useful stuff], Alexa is useless! Therefore it's a
gimmick."

I have an Echo Dot which I use almost exclusively for a few static purposes:
the weather, setting alarms, turning my lights on and off, and asking what
time it is.

I also ask it basic questions like whether various sports teams won or what
time they're playing, which it also answers well.

Not sure why you think it is useless just because it's not a magical general
AI that can do everything.

I find it extremely useful.

> For those who aren't visually impaired, the ability to use voice to turn off
> lights barely even makes sense

I'm not visually impaired and I use this feature all the time. It allows me to
turn off the light when reading in bed without having to get up and walk to
the light switch.

> most people I know who own one barely use them beyond a select number of
> features that are hard to get wrong

Yeah, exactly. How does this make it useless?

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pushpop
I fairness to your bed time reading example, it’s very common for people to
have bed side lights - even if they’re just little lamps that rest on a table.
At least this is the norm in the UK. So for a great many of us, turning our
reading light out would just be an extension of our arm.

My wife tends to prefer using the TV as her reading light. I find that rather
bizarre but she likes the background noise. In any case, TVs have remote
controls and sleep timers so that mitigates the need for voice control.

To be honest, I couldn’t think of a place I’d less want an Echo than the
bedroom. Even the bathroom seems less inappropriate (eg you might want music
when in the shower / bath).

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pushpop
Why am I getting downvoted? Do people disagree that it’s common for bedrooms
to have lamps? A little context would be appreciated because my comment is
100% accurate in terms my own experiences yet several people seem to disagree.
Genuinely interested to know why.

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Baeocystin
I didn't downvote, but just to answer- yes, I have a nightstand light, like
most bedrooms here in the US. However, I also use a CPAP machine, and it is a
genuine convenience to be able to put it on with the lights on, then use words
to shut the lights off instead of reaching over to the side and having to deal
with a slightly-too-short hose length. And frankly it's nice to not have to
leave one's blanket cocoon for light/dark, not even it a little.

A small thing? Sure. But it is a genuine comfort that I enjoy.

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pushpop
To be honest I’d lump you into the same as the caveat made earlier about
people with physical disabilities because even though you’re (presumably) able
bodied, at night time your movement is restricted.

I can totally see the benefit for people in circumstances like your own (and
those with greater concerns too). But for the average Joe? That’s another
matter. Like any accessibility tool, I agree they are fantastic for those who
depend upon it. However I wouldn’t advocate everyone gets a blind dog, hearing
aid or wheelchair unless they actually needed it. Similarly would you actually
want an Echo device in your bedroom if you didn’t have the accessibility
concern that your CPAP machine creates?

Ultimately it’s harder to justify that privacy vs convenience trade off when
accessibility isn’t an issue. But I accept that’s a decision which will be as
divided as it will be personal. Myself; I have an Echo in the kitchen but I
have no interest in allowing them to migrate upstairs.

Also thanks for the response. I do appreciate reading someone else’s
perspective:)

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djhaskin987
This is, while sad and even maddening, obvious.

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r00fus
It's obvious to anyone who spends a moment thinking about it that some portion
of what you say remains.

What's less obvious is that they store everything and most definitely index it
so it can be used later against you (all it takes is one legal action -
separation, police, you name it).

What's further disappointing is that Amazon stores the transcribed text. Which
may be incorrect but deemed "truth".

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rc_kas
I told alexa to go away. It did not. It just persists on nagging me to say
things other than alexa go away

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waplot
Well color me surprised.

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snowwolf
In the EU this is a violation of GDPR if true.

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jplayer01
Not sure why you're being downvoted. Is it not a GDPR violation?

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SilasX
Agreed, I was about to say the same thing. If it's their data (i.e. data the
customer generated and stored on the service), and there's a way to validate
that it's theirs (as it exists in the data store) based on information the
customer provided, I'm pretty sure the GDPR requires deletion on request.

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markjenkinswpg
ZDNet's article [https://www.zdnet.com/article/amazon-cant-yet-completely-
del...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/amazon-cant-yet-completely-delete-alexa-
voice-transcriptions/)

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dang
Thanks! We'll change to that from [https://www.zdnet.com/video/amazon-cant-
yet-completely-delet...](https://www.zdnet.com/video/amazon-cant-yet-
completely-delete-alexa-voice-transcriptions/), which is a video.

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lostmsu
Needs [video]

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sctb
Thanks! Updated.

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SilasX
Cache issue? I still don't see [video] in the title.

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lostmsu
The url was changed to a text article.

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justizin
interested to know how much amazon is spending to store hundreds of recordings
of me saying, "HDMI1"

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iak8god
According to this video they're only keeping text transcripts, so... maybe a
penny over your entire lifetime.

