Amazon’s lead data regulator in Europe, Luxembourg’s National Commission for Data Protection, has raised privacy concerns about its use of manual human reviews of Alexa AI voice assistant recordings.

A spokesman for the regulator confirmed in an email to TechCrunch it is discussing the matter with Amazon, adding: “At this stage, we cannot comment further about this case as we are bound by the obligation of professional secrecy.” The development was reported earlier by Reuters.

Amazon’s Alexa voice AI, which is embedded in a wide array of hardware — from the company’s own brand Echo smart speaker line to an assortment of third party devices (such as this talkative refrigerator or this oddball table lamp) — listens pervasively for a trigger word which activates a recording function, enabling it to stream audio data to the cloud for processing and storage.

However trigger-word activated voice AIs have been shown to be prone to accidental activation.

So there’s always a risk of these devices recording any audio in their vicinity, not just intentional voice queries…

In a nutshell, the AIs’ inability to distinguish between intentional interactions and stuff they overhear means they are natively prone to eavesdropping — hence the major privacy concerns.

Amazon has announced a host of forthcoming improvements for its Fire TV devices that ll offer greater voice commands and more 4K content.

In a press release on Tuesday, the firm announced a new range of Alexa voice commands that ll make it easier to find and play content.

Users will be able to launch apps, play content by speaking into the Fire TV remote.

More skills borrowed from the Amazon Echo speaker are also coming, including the ability to find local movie show times, read Kindle books and find local businesses.

to find out what movies are playing in theatres near you or specific movie times

YouTube 4K Ultra HD—Access YouTube s full 4K library via the YouTube.com app on Amazon Fire TV when connected to a UHD-compatible TV

Search for local businesses and restaurants using Alexa—Ask What Mexican restaurants are nearby?

to get convenient information on businesses nearby

Access Kindle e-books via Alexa—Say Read The Nightingale to listen to text-to-speech enabled books from your Kindle library through Amazon Fire TV

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