UGH: Again Amazon, Apple and Google could be infringing customers’ privacy with voice reviewers.

All three companies say voice recordings are occasionally reviewed to improve speech recognition. But the reaction to the Bloomberg article suggests many customers are unaware that humans may be listening.

The news site said it had spoken to seven people who reviewed audio from Amazon Echo smart speakers and the Alexa service.

Reviewers typically transcribed and annotated voice clips to help improve Amazon’s speech recognition systems. Amazon’s voice recordings are associated with an account number, the customer’s first name and the serial number of the Echo device used.

Some of the reviewers told Bloomberg that they shared amusing voice clips with one another in an internal chat room. They also described hearing distressing clips such as a potential sexual assault. However, they were told by colleagues that it was not Amazon’s job to intervene.

The terms and conditions for Amazon’s Alexa service state that voice recordings are used to “answer your questions, fulfill your requests, and improve your experience and our services”. Human reviewers are not explicitly mentioned.

Privacy is dead, killed by convenience.