In an email sent to customers today, Amazon said that Echo users will no longer be able to set their devices to process Alexa requests locally and, therefore, avoid sending voice recordings to Amazon’s cloud. Amazon apparently sent the email to users with “Do Not Send Voice Recordings” enabled on their Echo. Starting on March 28, recordings of everything command spoken to the Alexa living in Echo speakers and smart displays will automatically be sent to Amazon and processed in the cloud.
Scharon Harding for Ars Technica
AI is coming to your devices, and very few if any of them have the power to run AI applications without cloud support.
When this privacy setting goes away, how does that affect your use of Echo devices?
Let’s add some context from Amazon PR:
‘Do Not Send Voice Recordings’ was an opt-in feature that allowed Echo Dot (4th Gen), Echo Show 10, and Echo Show 15 devices to process the audio of Alexa requests locally on the supported device. It was only available to customers in the U.S. with devices set to English.
Mit anderen Worten: Echos haben in Deutschland schon immer die Recordings zur Verarbeitung an Amazon geschickt. Und es gibt auch weiterhin die Option, Sprachaufnahmen nicht zu speichern.
Und dann gibt es noch eine reaktive Stellungnahme:
“The Alexa experience is designed to protect our customers’ privacy and keep their data secure, and that’s not changing. We’re focusing on the privacy tools and controls that our customers use most and work well with generative AI experiences that rely on the processing power of Amazon’s secure cloud. Customers can continue to choose from a robust set of tools and controls, including the option to not save their voice recordings at all. We’ll continue learning from customer feedback, and building privacy features on their behalf.”
