Amazon is killing a privacy feature that enabled Alexa users to opt out of sending their voice recordings to the cloud for processing.
As part of its efforts to bolster the new Alexa Plus assistant, the company is removing the “Do Not Send Voice Recordings” functionality.
From March 28 this years, users now have the choice to grant Amazon access to all of the recordings or stop using Alexa on the best Amazon Echo models completely.
In an email to customers with Echo devices, the company explained that the expansion of Alexa’s capabilities was responsible for the change in policy.
Amazon said: “As we continue to expand Alexa’s capabilities with generative AI features that rely on the processing power of Amazon’s secure cloud, we have decided to no longer support this feature.”
The report from Ars Technica says Apple will lose access to the Voice ID feature that reports user specific information about calendar events and music.
Amazon is looking to placate users affected by this change by reassuring them about the security of those recordings that’ll now be sent to the cloud whether users like it or not.
“Alexa voice requests are always encrypted in transit to Amazon’s secure cloud, which was designed with layers of security protections to keep customer information safe,” the email continues.
The problem is, Amazon hasn’t always taken the greatest care of those voice recordings. For example, back in 2018 it emerged the company had sent a random user in Germany 1,700 recordings from another Alexa user. The company called it a human error. Now users have to trust there’ll be no more of those human errors.
An Amazon over-reach
The price to pay for a smarter Alexa is giving up privacy? Why is there always a trade off with these things? Why not just make Alexa+ available for those willing to share their recordings, rather than mandate it for everyone?
