Thousands of Amazon Workers hear to what you tell Alexa

There are some tens of millions of people who are using the smart speakers and its voice software for trivia, to play games or music on one hand. On the other hand, some millions of people are reluctant to get these devices into their homes with a fear that someone might be listening to what they speak.

To be frank, someone is listening to what you are speaking with Alexa.

Amazon.com employs some thousands of people across the globe in order to help improve the Alexa digital assistant powering its line of Echo speakers. The team listens to the voice recordings that are captured in the Echo owner’s homes and offices. These recordings are transcribed, annotated and again fed to the Alexa to improve its understanding of human speech. If Alexa starts understanding human speech in a better way, it will respond to the commands even effectively.

While marketing Amazon says that Alexa lives in the cloud and it is getting smarter always. But similar to many software tools, it is also built to learn from experience and users are teaching it.

Photo Credit: Bloomberg

This team consists of full-time employees of Amazon and also the ones that are working on a contractor basis. All these people work in outposts from Costa Rica to Boston, Romania, and India. These people are saying that they have signed a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) which stops them from speaking about this program publicly.

These people work nine hours a day, and each employ parses nearly 1000 clips in one shift. Two workers based out of Amazon’s Bucharest office which is present in the top three floors of Globalworth building has stated about their work. This building has no sign of Amazon office presence there.

Intercept has reported earlier that the employees of Amazon’s Ring identify the people and vehicles present in videos captured by doorbell camera of Company. This will help in training the software to identify the people by itself.