On December 15, 1791, when the U.S. government passed the first amendment and guaranteed freedom of speech, legislators were not thinking about Alexa, Siri, Cortana, or Google Assistant. People enjoy rights such as free speech in the United State and other countries around the world, and corporations are legally considered people for many purposes. And that matters, because where AI is answering, AI had to be listening. The accused murderer, James Bates, owned an Amazon Echo, and police were quick to request any recordings of conversations on the night of his death, as well as anything Alexa, the digital assistant Amazon embeds into the Echo, might have said. Amazon's key point: Alexa has first-amendment rights.

Source: Forbes February 24, 2017 17:58 UTC