Robots like Amazon’s Echo are becoming increasingly popular. But they’re relatively new guests in our homes, and we’re not always sure how they’ll behave. There’s been lots of anxiety about Echo working like a covert spy that listens to everything we say. And yet the device only starts recording after users wake it with a trigger word, Amazon doesn’t share customer-identifiable information with third parties, and users can permanently delete what Echo records. People even thought Alexa — the cloud-based voice service Echo uses — could call the police to report domestic abuse, even though that wasn’t possible.
