Amazon Echo Recorded This Family's Conversation In Secret And Sent It To A Random Contact

The point of smart speakers like Amazon Echo and Google Home is to listen to your commands and act right away, without you having to manually touch any controls. Unfortunately, sometimes that capability gets a few wires crossed and strange things happen.

A family in Portland, Oregon has claimed their Echo recorded a conversation in their home and then sent it to a random person on their contact list. They found out two weeks ago when the man, an employee of the husband, sent them the audio files saying he’d received them from their speaker.

The family says they’ve set up their entire home with Alexa-equipped devices to control the lights, heating, and security. When they realised what had happened, they unplugged everything and contacted Amazon.

“They said ‘our engineers went through your logs, and they saw exactly what you told us, they saw exactly what you said happened, and we're sorry.’ He apologized like 15 times in a matter of 30 minutes and he said we really appreciate you bringing this to our attention, this is something we need to fix!” the wife told local news.

Amazon, for its part, says it’s taking the incident very seriously to ensure it never happens again. What happened this time was that the Echo woke up because a word in the conversation sounded like the command phrase “Alexa”. Amazon, in a statement to Engadget, said Alexa then interpreted the phrase “send conversation”, at which point it asked out loud, “to whom?”

Supposedly something in the background conversation then sounded like a name on their contact list. Alexa then asked out loud “[contact name] right?” and probably then also interpreted an approval. “As unlikely as this string of events is, we are evaluating options to make this case even less likely,” Amazon said.

It’s a pretty scary mishap so it’s good that Amazon is taking it seriously. Perhaps a solution is simply making the Echo’s activation phrase a little longer or more unique. Either way though, it’s a clear indication of just how little control we can have when technology glitches out, and just how much damage it can do.