Amazon's Alexa event made no mention of privacy issues

A senior Amazon executive spent more than 80 minutes at a press event on Thursday unveiling a dizzying array of new voice-powered products, including an Alexa-powered microwave or a portable Alexa gadget for use in your business. car.

But while Amazon seemed to be discussing every imaginable way to more deeply integrate his vocal assistant into our daily lives, he was not talking about the potential privacy risks posed by these relationships between humans. and the robot.

And maybe just because most consumers have abandoned the idea of ​​privacy protection in our time – or think that the risk-reward balance of technologies such as Alexa is in line with our new lords artificially intelligent.

Amazon's event comes at a time in the United States where politicians looked at how they handle customer data, following the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal that was exposed earlier this year.

Amazon also faced its own privacy backlashes related to Alexa, including an instance in May in which a couple unknowingly recorded their private conversation and sent it to a contact on their phone.

But for all that Amazon is, it's not stupid. If stories like this one had a lasting impact on Echo sales, you could imagine that Amazon would devote at least one of the 80 minutes to today's event to talk about improvements. made to ensure that these marginal cases do not reoccur. .

Instead, everything was glam and Alexa glitter. If Amazon's customers do not grow Amazon, we live in a world where you can not expect the company to discuss the potential disadvantages. And it's sad all around.