Found out my smart speaker recorded a 3 hour chat with my cat

I was looking at my data download from Amazon and saw a file labeled 'ambient recording' that was over 3 hours long from last Tuesday. Turns out my Echo Dot in the living room recorded the whole time I was at work, which was just my cat meowing at birds outside the window. Kinda funny but also a bit creepy, you know? Has anyone else found weird stuff in their own data logs?

4 comments

4 Comments

king.eric3mo ago

Okay that's actually hilarious but yeah, super creepy too. My Echo probably has a whole library of me talking to my dog in a baby voice, which is way more embarrassing than cat chatter. king.val has a point about the weather thing, makes you wonder what the boring stuff builds up to in their data centers. Maybe they're just really invested in my local forecast.

charles6401mo ago

and it just builds on this thing i've been noticing lately, you know? like how we're all just feeding these huge systems little pieces of our lives without really thinking about it. my smart TV sends info back about what i watch and for how long, my phone tracks everywhere i go, even my thermostat knows when i'm home or not. it's like we're giving away all these tiny details that don't mean much by themselves but put them together and it's basically a map of your whole existence. just makes you wonder where the line is between convenience and just letting everything slip away.

gray_morgan3mo ago

Imagine what else it might have picked up without you knowing. That's the part that makes you wonder about all the quiet moments in your own home. Guess we just have to trust these devices or unplug them.

king.val3mo ago

My Echo only ever hears me asking for the weather. What's it really going to do with that?