Careful now... Amazon may be listening...!

I remember when I was in Portugal a few years back, a friend of mine being suspicious of SIRI listening in to her conversations, based on her getting served adverts relevant to a recent conversation she'd had, but with no related web activity on her part....

And if Apple have been doing this, it's likely all the major tech companies with the capacity to do so are following suite...

Amazon taking this to a new level...?

For years, Amazon has been assuring consumers that Alexa is not quietly listening in on all their conversations. But a recent move indicates the company is getting closer to just that. Amazon has purchased Bee, an AI-driven wearable device developer, according to The Wall Street Journal. These devices—priced as low as $49 in the US—can listen around the clock to whatever is happening within earshot, record clips of discussion, and employ this information to create reminders, to-do lists, and summaries "based on your chatter.

It's an upgrade from the existing Alexa design. While Echo devices wake up only when a "wake word" is uttered, these wearables operate in continuous mode. That is, they're continually collecting data, creating text transcripts that get sent to a paired smartphone. Amazon argues the more context its devices are given, the better they can serve. But one has to ask.... at what cost?

The Promise of AI Wearables

There's no disputing the upside. Imagine having a personal aide attached to your wrist, seamlessly dictating your ideas spoken aloud: "remind me to pick up milk," "email Jane about Friday," or "book a train ticket." No futzing with an app, no typing. Just speech, translated into action.

And I kind of get the convenience of AI tech being more integrated into daily life too, at least this is good for those of us with busy busy lives, which is many of us!

Privacy Trade-Offs

But these devices in their default always on mode are not going to distinguish between deliberate commands and idle conversation, and who knows what nuggets of naughtiness they are going to pick up on, and not just my conversation, but my family and friends conversations too!

Private information may be intercepted without permission, stored, and possibly abused. Amazon assures secure handling, but its past has not always been trustworthy. There were reports in 2019 of Amazon workers listening to recordings for "voice recognition improvement" and if that was 6 years ago, imagine what's going on now....

Final Thoughts: The Creep Factor...

It's a slightly scary thing that we've gone from being sceptical about listening devices which we at least nominally have to command to listen to us to 'always on devices' which can listen perpetually.

I guess at least this is just listening for now, next level is always on cameras in our homes, it's coming!