A hot potato: Amazon Echo users concerned about their privacy might have something else to worry about on March 28. That’s the date when supported devices will lose the option to store and process Alexa requests locally, ensuring that all voice recordings are sent to the cloud.
An email that Amazon sent to customers confirms that the Do Not Send Voice Recordings feature they enabled on supported Echo devices will soon no longer be available.
The message explains that the change is necessary following the introduction of a generative AI-powered version of its popular Alexa assistant last month. Alexa+, powered by large language models from Amazon Bedrock, will be free for all Prime members.
The email states that as Amazon continues to expand Alexa’s capabilities with generative AI features that rely on the processing power of Amazon’s secure cloud, it has decided to no longer support the local storage feature.
Amazon also writes that any previously saved voice recordings will be deleted after March 28.
If voice recording settings are set to “Don’t save recordings,” Voice ID, the Alexa+ feature that identifies the person speaking, will not work, and users will not be able to create a voice ID for individual users to access more personalized features.
The local processing of voice recordings was only available on the Echo Dot (4th Gen), Echo Show 10, and Echo Show 15, and only for customers in the US with devices set to English.
The change is unlikely to be welcomed by users, given Amazon’s history in this area. In 2019, Bloomberg reported that the company employed thousands of contractors and full-time workers around the world, “from Boston to Costa Rica, India and Romania,” to listen to voice recordings captured by Echo devices. These were transcribed and annotated to improve Alexa’s performance, helping it better understand human speech. Workers said they reviewed as many a 1,000 clips per shift.
Amazon-held Alexa recordings have also been sought by law enforcement to be used in criminal trials, including murder cases.
There was also the former Amazon executive who in 2020 said he turns off his Alexa smart speaker whenever he wants a “private moment.”
More recently, Amazon agreed to pay $25 million in civil penalties for failing to disclose that it stored recordings of children’s interactions with Alexa indefinitely.
Masthead: Jonathan Borba
