Alexa Sends Private Conversation to Random Contact

The main story that's been constantly running the headlines today is how what Amazon calls a series of unfortunate coincidences caused a woman's private conversation to be sent to one of her contacts [Source: Kiro7 News]. A family had Amazon Echos put in each room of her house (don't do that). A woman had a conversation with someone about hardwood floors. She got a phone call from one of her husband's employees explaining how he just heard her conversation. Amazon told Ars Technica what caused this.

"Echo woke up due to a word in background conversation sounding like "Alexa." Then, the subsequent conversation was heard as a "send message" request. At which point, Alexa said out loud "To whom?" At which point, the background conversation was interpreted as a name in the customers contact list. Alexa then asked out loud, "[contact name], right?" Alexa then interpreted background conversation as "right." As unlikely as this string of events is, we are evaluating options to make this case even less likely."

Is this true? Possibly. I doubt any hack took place and I can't imagine why Amazon would intentionally put this in. We'll see if this has any effect on the public's perception of smart speakers.