voice technology to reduce human error and streamline operations she said for instance a growing number of warehouses in the nations vast ecommerce network have replaced handheld tablets with wearable technology that allows employees to record their work through voice commands freeing up both hands for lifting and sorting products said roberto michel a senior editor for modern materials handling a trade publication covering the manufacturing industry more heres the difference between a minimum wage and living wage and why it matters a survey conducted by the trade outlet last year found that 39 of warehouse companies use voiceassisted technology an increase from 21 of such businesses who reported adoption of the devices a year prior michel said the technology speeds up the orderselection process versus fumbling with a handheld michel said however even ostensibly innocuous uses of voiceassisted technology can trigger privacy concerns said turow of the university of pennsylvania last week amazonowned grocery chain whole foods agreed to pay almost 300000 to workers in a settlement over allegations that a voiceassisted product used to track worker productivity at a chicago warehouse had recorded employees voices without their consent an amazoncom inc echo plus device is displayed during an unveiling event at the companys headquarters in seattle sept 25 2019 bloomberg via getty images file critics fear that voiceassisted products glean more revealing data than many users realize allowing companies to profit off of utterances made at home or work through carefully honed advertising or the sale of intimate information a consumers voice could be used to reveal a wealth of knowledge about him or her including height weight ethnicity personality traits and possible health issues said turow who spoke to scientists about audio sleuthing for his book on the collection of voice data in 2019 amazon announced the development of a deep learning model to detect when customers are frustrated with its voice assistant alexa can now try to adjust just like you or i would do the company said with frustration detection alexa will recognize positive negative and neutral tone for a request alexa is not designed to detect distinct emotions like happiness sadness anger or surprise amazon spokesperson lauren raemhild told abc news customers have several options to manage their alexa voice recordings including the option not to save their recordings at all she added last june tiktok updated its privacy policy expanding data collected by the company to include voice recordings companies that collect voice data could use information to sell products directly to consumers or pass the data along to advertisers turow said as we move into a world where people use voice over typing in their everyday lives marketers want to know what can i get out of the voice of this person he said more apples value plunged nearly 1 trillion in 2022 heres what that says about the economy rotenberg of the center for ai and digital policy warned that the collection of audio data could also result in nefarious actors