Why the Future of Amazon's Alexa Promises to be Both Complicated and Ubiquitous
THOUGHTS AS VARIOUS NEW ECHO DEVICES BREAK COVER
The days when Amazon’s Echo smart speaker was deemed a mere novelty now seem like a distant memory. At an excitingly packed event in Seattle, the online-store-turned-tech-company unveiled a staggeringly large array of new devices housing the now-iconic voice assistant Alexa, providing us with a tantalizing insight into how Alexa could extend its reach far outside the home. However, as the assistant becomes more ubiquitous, could familiar issues about privacy grow in complexity?
PRIVACY CONCERNS CONTINUE TO LINGER
It’s not that Amazon didn’t acknowledge the whole issue of privacy as the Seattle event opened. In August, that Amazon had decided to allow Alexa users to opt out of their voice recordings being human-assessed through a program designed to improve the assistant’s responses. “We’re investing in privacy across the board,” Dave Limp, Amazon’s hardware and services chief, explained in Seattle, scotching the idea of privacy as an afterthought across Amazon
