Amazon will discontinue a niche privacy feature on some of its Echo smart speakers that allowed users to prevent their voice commands from being processed in the company’s cloud. Beginning March 28, the “Do Not Send Voice Recordings” option, which processed audio locally on the device instead of sending it to Amazon’s cloud, will be retired.
In an email sent to customers who used the feature, Amazon stated that it decided to “no longer support this feature” to expand Alexa’s functionalities with generative artificial intelligence features that rely on cloud processing. Although this alteration might raise concerns among privacy-conscious users, the feature had limited availability and adoption. It was only available on three devices: the 4th generation Echo Dot, the Echo Show 10, and the Echo Show 15. It was also limited to U.S. customers with devices set to English.
Amazon indicated that the feature’s usage was minimal, with less than 0.03% of customers using it. Users can still prevent Alexa from saving voice recordings. Amazon announced that customers who were using the “Do Not Send” feature as of March 28 would be automatically switched to the “Don’t save recordings” option.
“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,” Amazon said in a statement.
