Amazon’s Astro home robot delves further into our lives than the company’s previous technologies, such as its Ring security cameras and Alexa speech assistants.
Astro’s features, which include cameras, sensors, and onboard AI, create privacy issues, especially because the robot is meant to make people love and trust it.
Astro, as opposed to stationary home security cameras, can move from room to room. It approaches the people, furniture, and appliances in your home.
Astro employs face recognition scans to identify household members, whereas your dog recognises the sound of your footfall as you come up to the door.
The endearingly charming robot will also map your house, study how you walk around it, and figure out where to stay until summoned. Throughout, Astro transports an Alexa voice assistant that transmits your inquiries via the cloud.
Astro requires a massive quantity of personal data to perform effectively. Much of it remains on the device, but some, such as video and audio recordings, is sent to Amazon’s cloud.
The data saved in the cloud must be safeguarded against both theft by hackers and unauthorised usage by Amazon.
Astro’s characteristics allow its owners to watch what’s going on in their houses at all times, making the small robot extremely dangerous for those in abusive relationships.
“It’s a pretty nightmarish degree of surveillance capitalism, just how much Amazon wants access to every aspect of our houses,” Will Owen, communications manager at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Program, said.
Amazon claims to have made efforts to reduce Astro’s potential creep factor as part of a larger attempt to gain trust in the technology.
The electronics in the robot handle face recognition and home-mapping data on the device, rather than uploading it to Amazon’s cloud.
Astro’s and the cloud’s data is encrypted. And, when a live watch session is about to begin, Astro displays a notice on its screen, and individuals at home may prohibit footage from streaming by pressing a button or saying “Astro stop.” People in the house can place Astro in do-not-disturb mode to prevent additional video streaming attempts.
To read our blog on “Amazon to allow retailers sell Prime-eligible items on their own websites” click here
