Tech giants risk privacy probes over Alexa, Siri reviewers

Bloomberg first reported in April that Amazon had a team of thousands of workers around the world listening to Alexa audio requests with the goal of improving the software. — AP

Regulators and lawmakers in the US and Europe are examining whether Google, Apple Inc and Amazon.com Inc are violating privacy by employing human reviewers to listen to voice commands recorded by digital assistants.

Apple and Google, which is currently being investigated by Hamburg’s data protection authority, have both suspended their programmes; Amazon late on Aug 2 announced changes to its terms that let users opt out of human review of their recordings. Regulators from Ireland and the UK are now also looking into whether the tech giants have infringed European privacy regulations.