Alexa creepily recorded a family's private conversations, sent them to business associate

Elizabeth Weise | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Amazon Echo recorded conversation, sent to random person An "unlikely" string of events prompted Amazon's Echo personal assistant device to record a Portland, Oregon, family's private conversation and send it to an acquaintance in Seattle, the company said Thursday. (May 25)

SAN FRANCISCO — A Portland family's private conversations were recorded by their Amazon Echo smart speaker and emailed to a random phone contact of the father in an incident that has given fresh life to concerns that popular smart speakers are recording more than their owners realize.

The Oregon family contacted Amazon after a private conversation in their home was recorded by their Amazon Echo — the voice-controlled smart speaker — and the recorded audio was sent to the phone of someone in Seattle who was in the father's contact list, they told a local TV station.

"My husband and I would joke and say I'd bet these devices are listening to what we're saying," Danielle, who did not want us to use her last name, told KIRO TV in Seattle.

Amazon confirmed the event and said an unforeseen combination of random words in a conversation the family didn't realize was being overheard by Alexa triggered the action. It is working to make sure it doesn't happen again.

When it's turned on, Amazon's voice recognition program is constantly listening for its "wake word," the word that tells the system to pay attention. Alexa has four — Alexa, Echo, Amazon or Computer, but the default is Alexa unless the user changes it.

After it hears the wake word, it starts sending the conversation to cloud-computing servers, where it's recorded and translated for Alexa to respond to.

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The family's house has multiple Echo devices that control heating, lights and a security system.

At first, they didn't believe it when the colleague called to tell them he'd received recordings of their conversations. But when he told them they'd been talking about hardwood floors, they realized he wasn't joking.

"I felt invaded," the woman told the television station.

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How it happened

Voice-activated digital assistants have become better at discerning human speech amidst background noise, and as the speakers that listen for that speech have gotten better at hearing words spoken even a room or two away. This is making the balance between sensitivity and not having too many false positives ever more difficult to maintain.

In the case of the Portland family, there were many false positives. First, according to Amazon, the Echo woke up when someone in the home said something that to it sounded like “Alexa.”

Next, the subsequent conversation included something that, to Alexa, sounded like a “Send a message” request.

At which point, Alexa said out loud, “To whom?”

It's quite possible the family had their Alexa's volume set low enough that they couldn't hear the response, or they were far enough away or there was enough other noise in the room that they didn't notice.

Each Amazon Echo speaker has seven microphones arrayed so the cylindrical speaker can pick up voice commands from far away or even in noisy rooms with lots of conversations going on.

Next, Alexa interpreted something said in the background conversation as a name in the customers’ contact list, which he must have allowed Alexa to access when he set it up.

Alexa then asked, again out loud, “(Contact name), right?”

No one heard or answered, but Alexa then interpreted something in the background conversation as confirming with the word “Right.” Alexa then sent the message along to the contact — without the family realizing it.

Amazon says it is evaluating options to make cases such as happened to the Portland family less likely.

But given that Forrester predicts by 2020 almost 50% of American households will contain a smart speaker, expect more such such confusion in the future.