Voice assistants (whether in smart speakers or in our phones or
other devices) can help us accomplish many tasks very quickly with
a simple voice command. The assistant listens for its ‘wake
word’ and then records the following command and processes
the action required (whether that be setting an alarm or ordering a
takeaway, or any one of a wide range of ‘skills’ that
can be purchased or programmed). However, various news reports over
the last year have uncovered some controversial features and
pointed to privacy concerns not only for device owners,
but for visitors to homes or offices with those devices.
Firstly, in April 2019, Amazon confirmed that the recordings of
the voice commands were reviewed by humans and not just by the
voice recognition algorithm. This human review is used to check and
improve the software, but it does mean that whatever is recorded
could be overhead by an actual person. The risks that result from
this became very clear in
