Amazon allowing users to opt out of its program that has workers listen to customers' voice commands

Amazon will be the last of three major tech companies to alter its policy on listening to customers' voice recordings amid mounting public pressure. On Friday, Amazon began allowing users of its Echo smart speaker -- equipped with the voice-assistant Alexa -- to opt out of program that gathered some users' voice recordings for human review. After being collected, recordings were sent to third-party contractors who then listened to the clips and documented its content and whether or not the device was able to complete the command. Amazon will let users choose whether or not their voice recordings can be used in a program that listens to audio snippets for Echo smart-speaker improvements. As previously reported, the program accidentally scraped up private information from users by accident, including arguments, official business talk, and audio of people having sex.