This year, though, the online retailing giant faced a backlash after news broke that human reviewers were sometimes listening to recordings of users’ private conversations with Alexa.

Alexa has dominated the smart speaker race against Apple’s Siri and Google Assistant.

Now, of the 76 million smart speakers perched in US homes and businesses, 70% are Echo devices, according to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners. 

 Google, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook have also admitted to listening in on recorded user conversations with smart assistants.