Oct 31 (Reuters) - E-commerce giant Amazon.com ( AMZN ) has asked

a U.S. judge to throw out a multibillion-dollar consumer lawsuit

that claims the tech company's cloud-based voice service Alexa

illegally collected and recorded private conversations without

consent.

Amazon ( AMZN ) said in a federal court filing on Wednesday in

Seattle that the consumers had failed after years of litigation

to show it engaged in unfair or deceptive practices.

Amazon ( AMZN ) asked U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik to rule for

the company on the merits of the plaintiffs' claims, which would

end the case before a trial.

"Plaintiffs' Alexa recordings in fact contain none of the

private, salacious, or personal details they claimed in their

complaint," Amazon ( AMZN ) told the court. The filing said the consumers

"either knew or reasonably should have known how Alexa worked."

Amazon ( AMZN ) and the plaintiffs' lawyers did not immediately

respond to requests for comment on Thursday.

The lawsuit, filed in 2021, claimed Amazon ( AMZN ) violated state

wiretap laws through its collection and storage of data from its

Alexa voice-assistant software.

Amazon ( AMZN ) launched Alexa in 2014 as a virtual assistant that

responds to a command prompt, or "wake" word, such as "hi,

Alexa."

The consumers alleged Amazon ( AMZN ) developed Alexa "to illegally

and surreptitiously intercept billions of private conversations"

that extended beyond commands aimed at Alexa.

Amazon ( AMZN ) countered that its Alexa-enabled devices "monitor

only for an acoustic pattern that matches the wake-word, and

they do not activate until that pattern is detected."

Amazon ( AMZN ) said there was no evidence that Alexa "ever captured

any plaintiff's 'conversation' or other communication." It said

it built Alexa with safeguards to prevent "accidental"

activations.

Only a "tiny fraction" of Alexa recordings "undergo

anonymized human review as part of Amazon's ( AMZN ) machine learning

processes," Wednesday's filing said. Amazon ( AMZN ) denied that

concealed the role of human review from Alexa users.

The plaintiffs have asked Lasnik to approve two classes of

consumers in the case made up of millions of individuals. They

are seeking billions of dollars in damages.

The plaintiffs also want a court order restricting Amazon's ( AMZN )

use of secret records and requiring it to destroy any related

data.

The case is Kaeli Garner v. Amazon.com ( AMZN ), U.S. District Court,

Western District of Washington, No. 2:21-cv-00750-RSL.

For plaintiffs: Michael Canty of Labaton Keller Sucharow and

Paul Geller of Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd

For Amazon ( AMZN ): Jedediah Wakefield and Brian Buckley of Fenwick

& West

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