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from the giving-the-kids-a-big-brother dept.
Amazon has unveiled a Kids Edition of its Echo Dot smart speaker:
The $79 Echo Dot Kids Edition takes the original device's design and wraps it in a kid-friendly, colorful case. Otherwise, the hardware is the same as the tiny smart speaker that debuted in 2016. While the regular, $49 Dot is considered a more affordable and accessible version of the regular Echo speaker, the Kids Edition costs more thanks to its bundled software. Amazon includes a two-year warranty plus a one-year subscription to the new Amazon FreeTime Unlimited service, an expanded version of Amazon's new FreeTime for Alexa.
FreeTime gives users "family-focused features" and new parental controls that adults can use to restrict what their kids can do with Alexa. Family features include "Education Q&A," allowing kids to ask Alexa science, math, spelling, and definition questions, "Alexa Speaks 'Kid,'" which gives Alexa kid-appropriate answers to nebulous statements that kids may say such as, "Alexa, I'm bored." Parents can also limit the times during which kids can speak to Alexa (like no talking to it after bedtime), restrict the skills kids can use, filter out songs with explicit lyrics, and more.
[...] But even with the added parental controls, some will be wary of a speaker designed to listen to their children. Like the original Dot, the Kids Edition has a mute button and parents can put the device in "sleep mode" to prevent it from responding to commands. However, the mic will always be listening for its wake-word just like other Echo devices.
In the new Parent Dashboard in the Alexa app and online, parents can monitor how kids are using their Echos (including all their utterances, or the phrases Alexa thinks it heard before trying to respond) and limit their abilities. According to a Buzzfeed report, Amazon claims it isn't making back-end profiles for users with data harvested from Alexa. While the virtual assistant can now recognize voices and provide personalized answers based on who's talking, the company maintains that data is only being used to make Alexa smarter and more tailored to each user.
(Score: 3, Informative) by bob_super on Wednesday April 25 2018, @07:11PM (2 children)
As much as I hate to Godwin the thread, we have historical records showing that when shit is burning, it's already too late to erase the databases.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Wednesday April 25 2018, @08:02PM (1 child)
Yes, so if the devices start listening and building databases of our private speech, we should burn them.
But it isn't. So we're not there.
PS: Never fear to Godwin a thread, certainly not with me. Hitler is a historical lessen that should be trotted out whenever and wherever it seems relevant. Of course, you have to actually be right, which metric you failed this time around, but don't let that stop you. :)
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday April 25 2018, @09:44PM
You're being quite affirmative. In this day and age where the consumer information is often the most valuable asset of a company, tell me exactly why you know that storage and processing does not happen at every opportunity. Especially in this litigious country where any buggy answer by a personal assistant could be grounds for a lawsuit. Recording of every interaction with the device is essentially required.
And like Uber deciding to keep track of customers long after the end of their ride, who's deciding when an interaction is really over?