Amazon He recently released news that has made his nose turn up to numerous users, since the consequences of his decision will have inevitable repercussions on their privacy. Starting from March 28, in conjunction with the probable preview arrival of Alexa Plusit will no longer be possible for US customers to activate a particularly appreciated function precisely for the protection of confidentiality: from that moment, in fact, vocal recordings will have to be sent to Amazon’s servers.
The news, communicated by email and subsequently made public also on the web, triggered a heated debate. The models of intelligent speakers Echo who gave the opportunity to process the requests to Alexa only on the device, avoiding to send the vocal recordings to the cloud, they will lose this option deemed precious by many precisely because it is functional to the protection of privacy: as mentioned by The Vergethese are Echo Dot of fourth generation, Echo Show 10 and Echo Show 15, the only ones who made US users available to US users, with devices in English, the possibility of also benefiting from the local elaboration of vocal recordings.
“Dear customer, we contact you to inform you that the Alexa function ‘Do not send the voice recordings’ you have activated on your Echo device will no longer be available starting from March 28, 2025“reads the note.“This function allowed the devices Echo compatible to elaborate the audio of requests to Alexa only locally”continues the email. “While we continue to expand Alexa’s skills with generative artificial intelligence functionality that are based on the processing power of Amazon’s safe cloud, we have decided not to support this feature anymore”. At the basis of this decision, therefore, there would be officially the need to resort to the calculation power of the cloud to process the new functions of Alexa Plus, a version enhanced by artificial generative intelligence.
The advice is therefore to check Alexa’s settings well. In the event that the one that does not provide for sending the recordingsexplains the email, from 28 March the option not to save them will be set: this means that the requests will be elaborated by the cloud, but then subsequently eliminated. This, however, will have consequences on the Voice ID features, which allows Alexa to recognize the owner’s item and customize the experience of use: without saving the voice recordings, the Voice ID will not be able to work. The only way to fully exploit Alexa Plus will therefore be to get to a compromise regarding its privacy, even if the Lauren Raemhild spokesman has assured that the company will do everything to protect the confidentiality of its customers.
Here is the declaration of Amazon. “Alexa experience is designed to protect our customers’ privacy and keep their data safe, and this will not change“, they assure from the US multinational.”We are focusing on instruments And on the controls for privacy that our customers use most and that work well with the experiences of generative artificial intelligence that are based on the processing power of Amazon’s safe cloud.
Customers can continue to choose between a solid set of tools and controls, including the option not to save their vocal recordings at all. We will continue to learn from feedback of customers and develop functionality for privacy on their behalf“.