Amazon has announced a new lineup of Echo devices and a slew of privacy updates for existing products, as the company expands further into consumers’ lives.

Amazon unveiled a series of products at an event in Seattle on Wednesday, including earbuds, eyeglasses and even a smart oven. But in addition to hardware announcements, the company also announced new privacy updates for existing products, coming on the heels of a number of recent scandals.

Amazon has refined its “wake word” software, the feature that is used to command the personal assistant software Alexa, to make it 50% more accurate and decrease the likelihood customers inadvertently record themselves. The company will also provide a mute button that electronically disconnects microphones from Echo, and will give readers the option to opt out of recording or delete audio recordings after a certain amount of time.

Amazon will also introduce a new privacy feature for the smart doorbells of its subsidiary Ring called “Home Mode”, which will prevent the doorbell cameras from recording footage when residents are home. Earlier this year, Amazon rolled out “privacy zones” which exclude selected areas in Ring’s field of vision from being recorded or viewed live.

The changes come as Amazon has faced scrutiny for recording customer conversations through Alexa and its public-private partnership with police forces through a smart doorbell company.

“Privacy cannot be an afterthought when it comes to the devices and services we offer our customers,” Dave Limp, senior vice-president of devices, said at the Seattle event. “It has to be foundational and built in from the beginning for every piece of hardware, software, and service that we create.”

Amazon faced criticism in April when Bloomberg reported that Amazon employees listen to Alexa voice archives to train its artificial intelligence. Amazon previously kept a copy of all audio Alexa records after hearing its name prompt it to listen.

Now, customers have the ability to instruct Alexa to “delete everything I said today” or “delete what I just said”.

News investigations into Ring’s expanding partnerships with police forces across the US have revealed that the company has partnered with more than 465 law enforcement agencies, raising privacy concerns and civil rights issues.

Amazon’s new eyeglasses, which come with its virtual assistant Alexa. Photograph: Jeffrey Dastin/Reuters

Advocates say the public-private surveillance partnership threatens public safety, skewing police allegiance to a company instead of constituents. Many have also expressed concern regarding the disproportionate effects surveillance can have on people of color.

“We want to ensure that customers have the control with the cameras they have,” Limp said in Seattle.

The changes are becoming more pressing as Amazon seeks to expand into every aspect of consumer lives, analysts say, with acquisitions in new spaces and Alexa integrating into a larger variety of devices.

“The enormous breadth of new features shows that ubiquity also comes with complexity,” Geoff Blaber, vice-president of research at the market analysis firm CCS Insight, said. “As Alexa gets integrated more deeply into an ever-expanding range of devices and appliances, the challenge for Amazon will be managing that complexity.”