An "unlikely" string of events prompted Amazon's Echo personal assistant device to record a Portland, Oregon, family's private conversation and send it to an acquaintance in Seattle, the company said Thursday.

SEATTLE - A Portland, Oregon, family contacted Amazon to investigate after they say a private conversation in their home was recorded by Amazon's Alexa – the voice-controlled smart speaker – and the recorded audio was sent to the phone of a random person in Seattle, who was in the family's contact list. "My husband and I would joke and say, 'I'd bet these devices are listening to what we're saying,'" said Danielle, who did not want KIRO-TV to use her last name. Every room in her family home was wired with the Amazon devices to control her home's heat, lights and security system. But Danielle said that two weeks ago, the family's love for Alexa changed with an alarming phone call. "The person on the other line said, 'Unplug your Alexa devices right now,'" she said.

One of the biggest and most important trends in business today is the steady growth of artificial intelligence (AI). While people often think of AI in terms of the ways it can eliminate menial tasks such as paperwork and scheduling, the fact is that it will soon be touching every part of the business world, if it is not already. AI is doing more than just providing companies with virtual personal assistants -- it is changing marketing as we know it. Digital marketers today are helped by an incredible wave of information that is available from accessible, advanced data analytics tools, providing more insight into consumers as well as how to market directly to them. As the chief digital officer at Advantix Digital, I have had the chance to be exposed to AI -- from the introduction of machine learning to AdWords and optimizing for voice search. While marketers have always used data as much as they could, the fact is that many ad campaigns still involve a lot of educated guesswork from marketers.

Digital Transformation continues to gain velocity. But even as technology takes over many tasks, it's important that a Human touch is retained. This thought-provoking article by Bryan Kramer s another in our "Great Articles You may have missed" series. A few years ago, experts were trumpeting that the future is mobile, and they weren't wrong. Some of the world's most successful new apps and business models are mobile-based -- just look at Uber, Instagram, and Snapchat.

Mobility, as well as app ecosystem, have made remarkable changes in our daily lives. I believe that it has transformed the way we deal with our activities whether it is online shopping, entertainment etc. The emergence of Artificial Intelligence is equally having a greater impact on our interactions with our gadgets along with mobile apps. AI is now multi-faceted with a wide range of impacts, especially in mobile app solutions. From deep learning, advanced machine learning to natural language processing as well as advanced algorithms, AI currently works at various levels. It assists in creating new as well as unique applications.

University researchers from Berkeley and Georgetown found in a 2016 paper that sounds unintelligible to humans can set off voice assistants in general, which raised concerns of exploitation by attackers. Amazon did not immediately comment on the matter, but it previously told The New York Times that it has taken steps to keep its devices secure.

We're learning an important lesson about cutting-edge voice technology: Amazon's Alexa is always listening. Putting live microphones in our homes has always been an out-there idea. But tech companies successfully marketed talking speakers such as the Amazon Echo and Google Home to millions by assuring they only record us when we give a "wake word." That turns out to be a misnomer. These devices are always "awake," passively listening for the command to activate, such as "Alexa," "O.K. Google," or "Hey Siri."

We're learning an important lesson about cutting-edge voice technology: Amazon's Alexa is always listening. Putting live microphones in our homes has always been an out-there idea. But tech companies successfully marketed talking speakers such as the Amazon Echo and Google Home to millions by assuring they only record us when we give a "wake word." That turns out to be a misnomer. These devices are always "awake," passively listening for the command to activate, such as "Alexa," "O.K. Google," or "Hey Siri."

SEATTLE – A couple's private conversation was mysteriously recorded by their Amazon Echo device and sent to one of their contacts, igniting privacy concerns about the voice-activated gadgets the online retailer wants to make as commonplace in homes as televisions. The two found about it when they received a phone call two weeks ago from one of the husband's employees telling them to "Unplug your Alexa devices right now. You're being hacked," news station KIRO 7 reported. Inc. said in a statement to the station that it was an "extremely rare occurrence." The Portland, Oregon, couple used Amazon's voice-activated devices throughout their home to control heat, lights and the security system, according to the news report. Amazon in 2014 introduced the new line of devices, which can also stream music and order goods from Amazon via voice command.

This is the first chapter in Element AI's Foundations Series on AI-First Design (AI1D). Each chapter aims to define the component parts of AI1D in order to create a common language with which to explore this new era of design. You can read the intro to the series here, and sign up to stay tuned for the next chapter here. As a designer, why should you need to be able to understand artificial intelligence? It's a term being bandied about so much in media and tech circles lately, a kind of catchall that could be describing anything from virtual personal assistants, robots, sci-fi characters, or the latest deep learning algorithm. Perhaps you work in AI and you have a more nuanced understanding of these distinct fields, or maybe you just sense that your work will be affected in some way by AI in the coming years, but you're not quite sure how.