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With Amazon’s Prime Day almost here, thousands of customers will be able buy Echo speakers and other Alexa gadgets at a discounted price. However, according to a new survey, concerns over the recent revelations about Amazon employing thousands of ‘listeners’ to go through Alexa’s daily voice recordings could negatively affect the sales.
PCMag reported that of the total 1000 potential Prime Day shoppers polled between May 28 and May 31, 39 percent said that the recent events will probably discourage them from purchasing Alexa-enabled devices. The remaining 61 percent said that it will not affect their willingness to purchase the products.
The concerns about privacy grew after Bloomberg’s report in April, revealing how Amazon listens to Alexa’s voice recordings from devices in the US and around the world and employs thousands of people to understand the parts of human speech that the machine does not get. Amazon said that humans are an important element in backing up Alexa’s capabilities.
“For example, this information helps us train our speech recognition and natural language understanding systems, so Alexa can better understand your requests, and ensure the service works well for everyone,” explained a spokesperson from Amazon.
PCMag survey also assessed another issue that is worrying purchasers: the increasing number of thefts by porch pirates. 36% of the people surveyed said that they are concerned with their packages being stolen by porch pirates. Among them, 13 percent are planning to work from home to be able to personally collect the packages, 10 percent plant to have the parcels shipped to a different location such as work.
Only thirteen percent of the people concerned by the thefts have a security camera installed at home. An outdoor camera doesn’t necessarily stop thefts, but it could be efficient as a deterrent in some instances.
Amazon offers a wide range of cameras, among which its popular Ring smart doorbell.
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