Information & Ethics committee  We happily obey the laws of all the countries in which we operate. If there is a binding legal order that's reasonable in scope and so forth, then we will respond to that appropriately.

Information & Ethics committee  No, the only thing we could respond with is the information that I just described, which are the responses that come from the user once they've awakened the device. There's no storage of ambient sound in the environment.

Information & Ethics committee  That is correct.

Information & Ethics committee  No. The reference to training is simply that we improve our natural language processing models using the data that the customers give to us through their interaction with the device. It's not at all based on ambient sound.

Information & Ethics committee  It's not passed to any third party. It's not used for advertising purposes and so forth.

Information & Ethics committee  —and we make it really, really easy to delete and to control that data.

Information & Ethics committee  Alexa is listening for a keyword, the wake word, which alerts the system that you want to interact with it in some fashion. That information is not locally stored. There's nothing stored locally on the device. Once the keyword is recognized, it follows that. There's a light on the device that tells you that the device is now active, and the subsequent sound in the room is then streamed to the cloud.

Information & Ethics committee  That information becomes part of your account information, just as it would if you were buying books on our website. Therefore, it could influence what we present to you as other things you might be interested in.

Information & Ethics committee  It's theoretically possible, yes. I don't know if that actual algorithm is there.

Information & Ethics committee  I don't know. I'd have to get back to you on that.

Information & Ethics committee  This is because the user directly ties the device to their account and they have full visibility into the utterances. You can see a full list of what you've said and you can delete any one of those. Those will immediately get removed from the database and would not be the basis for a recommendation.

Information & Ethics committee  I think it's very clear. The consent is part of the experience. To take a colloquial example, I haven't explicitly consented to my voice and video being recorded here today, but I understand from the context that it's probably happening. We believe that simple consumer experiences are best.

Information & Ethics committee  No, that's not correct.

Information & Ethics committee  It doesn't sound familiar to me at all, but I'd be happy to double-check. No, I'm not familiar with that.

Information & Ethics committee  Again, we believe that the principles of consumer trust—putting customers first, giving them control over their data and getting their consent for usage of data—make sense. The specific ways in which that is done and the amount of record-keeping and the bureaucracy involved sometimes seem to outweigh the benefit to consumers, so we really think we need to work together as a community to find a right balance that's not too onerous.