Starting from March 28, 2025in United Stateswill change the way Alexa manages the vocal recordings of users, as The option that allowed not to send them to Amazon’s servers will no longer be available. Until now, who owned Echo devices (in this case Echo dot of fourth generation, Echo Show 10 and Echo Show 15), he could choose to elaborate the vocal commands locally, without transmitting them to Amazon, but this possibility will be removed. As a result, any interaction with Alexa – except for some simpler commands – will be automatically sent to the cloud for analysis. According to the company, this choice is necessary to improve Alexa’s skills, especially in view of the introduction of Alexa Plusthe new advanced version of the vowel assistant that will exploit functionality based on generative artificial intelligence.
The decision raised Users’ privacy questionsconsidering that Amazon has already faced disputes in the past for the management of voice data. In order not to save the voice recordings, the option will remain available, but activate it will involve limitations, such as deactivation of personalized vocal recognition. For Italian users, however, nothing changes: the option in question has never been available.
Alexa and Amazon: what changes in the USA
The change announced by Amazon concerns two options in the Alexa settings: “Don’t send voice recordings” And “Do not save voice recordings “. The first will be completely removed, forcing all users to send their vocal requests to Amazon servers. This means that every time an American user will talk to Alexa, the command will no longer be elaborated locally on the device, but will be transmitted to Amazon’s servers to be tried. The option that allows you not to save your vocal recordings, on the other hand, will still be available but, if activated, some advanced Alexa functions, such as personalized vocal identification (the so -called Vocal id) will no longer be accessible.
The company has justified this change stating that the calculation power necessary for the new features of Alexa Plus requires cloud processing. If you are not aware of it, Alexa Plus will be an update of the vowel assistant based on generative artificial intelligence, designed to make conversations more natural and personalized. This service will be offered free of charge to first userswhile for the others it will cost 19.99 dollars a month (initially it will be accessible only in the US). To improve the performance of Alexa Plus, Amazon needs to collect and analyze a greater volume of vocal data, making it impossible to maintain local processing.
In a declaration issued to the information site Techcrunch, Amazon He explained:
Alexa experience is designed to protect our customers (…) and keep their data safe, and this is not changing. We are focusing on the tools and controls on the privacy that our customers use most and work well with generative artificial intelligence experiences that are based on the processing power of Amazon’s safe cloud.
Because the novelty aroused fears about privacy
What he aroused Privacy concerns Regarding the novelty announced by Amazon concerns the treatment of vocal recordings by the company. Amazon said that the data will be eliminated after processing, but some fear that things can go as in the past. In the 2019in fact, it emerged that some employees listened to and manually noted the voice recordings to improve the precision of the assistant and in 2023 Amazon agreed to pay one a fine of $ 25 million at the Federal Trade Commission for The vocal recordings of children illegally preserved Instead of deleting them as required by privacy regulations. These precedents raise doubts about how much it is really safe to entrust your vocal data to the Amazon cloud.
Another critical point is the data security in the cloud. Amazon claims to encrypt vocal data while transmitted to its servers, but once they arrive in the cloud they could be decitted to perform analyzes. This could potentially be a problem in case of any IT attacks. Although no violations have been reported to the vocal servers of Amazon, in the past other cloud services of the company have been involved in data leaks due to vulnerability in the systems of third companies.
For those who are worried about their privacy, the alternatives to contain the collection of vocal data are quite limited. The only way to prevent the recordings from being sent to Amazon servers would be to not use Alexa, or deactivate the microphone on Echo devices when they are not in use. For the US who consider Alexa an ally indispensable in their days, however, all that remains is to trust the company of Jeff Bezos.
