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Amazon Gives Option to Disable Human Review on Alexa

  • Alexa reviewers transcribe, annotate some voice recordings
  • Apple, Google suspended human voice review programs this week
An Amazon Echo smart speaker

An Amazon Echo smart speaker

Photographer: Andrew Matthews/Getty Images

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Amazon.com Inc. will let Alexa users opt out of human review of their voice recordings, a move that follows criticism that the program violated customers’ privacy.

A new policy took effect Friday that allows customers, through an option in the settings menu of the Alexa smartphone app, to remove their recordings from a pool that could be analyzed by Amazon employees and contract workers, a spokeswoman for the Seattle company said. It follows similar moves by Apple Inc. and Google.