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Amazon Alexa wants to save you from uncomfortable Christmas dinner talk. Be careful what you wish for.

Buyniski, Helen
http://www.rt.com/op-ed/476428-alexa-subject-change-christmas-arguments/

Publisher:  RT
Date Written:  19/12/2019
Year Published:  2019  
Resource Type:  Article

Amazon has introduced a feature for Alexa to introduce conversation topics at Christmas family dinners. Given the history of privacy breaches people should wary.

Abstract: 

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Excerpt:

Alexa's new 'change the subject' feature offers the user an escape hatch for when the family dinner discussion veers into politics or other third-rail issues, Amazon has announced.

The AI’s 'distraction technique' can single-handedly stop a holiday meal from going off the rails or "turning into a full-blown row" by supplying innocuous new conversation topics – fun fluff from superhero movies to celebrity crushes, the megacorp brags....

Given what we know about Alexa – that it'’s always listening (for the 'wake word', but also to anything else it hears), that it frequently starts recording unprompted, that its 'artificial intelligence' often involves a human eavesdropping, and that its recordings can end up in the hands of everyone from police to random Amazon customers – it should remain unthinkable.
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