From the dawn of time to the release of Her and beyond, man has dreamed of the day they could bone a sex machine. Friends, that day is now upon us… if you’re fine with Amazon recording it.
On Wednesday, Bloomberg Businessweek tweeted out a copy of their latest cover, linking to a feature article on the Orwellian nightmare of armies of Silicon Valley temps listening in on smart speaker conversations to improve speech recognition technology. Said cover features the caption “Alexa, What’s Privacy?” next to a hand reaching down to unscrew an Amazon Echo Plus, unveiling what someone apparently believed was recognisably an ear.
An ear is not the first body part that comes to mind.
NEW COVER: Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook are listening to your most intimate moments.
Here’s how the world’s biggest companies got millions of people to let temps analyze some very sensitive recordings https://t.co/ugW9CUq72N pic.twitter.com/1EY9o6U2Fr
— Businessweek (@BW) December 11, 2019
In fact, it looks exactly like a certain other tech product that sometimes also comes shaped like the wrong body part.
incredible, alexa now comes with fleshlight mode https://t.co/oiX2LI8kce
— Samantha Cole (@samleecole) December 11, 2019
they wont even let *me* fuck the alexa https://t.co/QGGR98xHab
— ???????????????????????? ???????????????????????? (@333333333433333) December 11, 2019
… … … ooooooh, it’s an ear https://t.co/22NXQOEsIo
— Parker Molloy (@ParkerMolloy) December 11, 2019
ABSOLUTELY thought this was a weird new fleshlight orifice. finally u can fuck a ear https://t.co/07rStZQose
— jes tom ????✨ (@jestom) December 11, 2019
It doesn’t help that the linked Businessweek article (which is worth a read) cites sources as saying that GlobeTech contractors working on speech recognition for Apple’s Siri had “no specific mechanism to report or delete offensive or inappropriate audio, such as drunk-sounding users slurring demands into the mics or people dictating sexts.” The article further added that workers “who asked managers whether they could skip overly private clips were told no clips were too private.”
But this is belabouring the question, which is Alexa: would you? And more specifically, would you knowing an intern might listen in?