From March 28, 2025, Amazon will change the processing of the voice recordings of Alexa devices. Instead of the previous option to process voice commands locally, cloud storage should now be used.
• Change in the processing of voice commands
• March 28, 2025
• Data protection only with limited function
Change in the processing of voice commands
As of March 28, 2025, Amazon stopped working locally to process the Alexa devices. In the future, voice commands by users of the ECHO devices will be automatically sent to Amazon’s cloud server for processing, as reported by the online magazine ARS Technica. In a message to affected users, the company explained: “Since we expand Alexa’s skills with generative AI functions that rely on the computing performance of the safe cloud of Amazon, we have decided not to support this function”. Users don’t have a choice.
Consequences for users
Amazon emphasizes that the recordings are deleted after processing, whoever wants to protect your data and have activated the setting “Do not save any language records”, will have to expect restrictions on functions such as “Voice ID”. Among other things, this enables individual calendar events, memories or music recommendations to be created.
The innovation currently affects customers in the USA, regardless of an Alexa+subscription, since local storage was only available for a few devices and, for example, did not exist in Germany. Users show up on the net. Among other things, commented in a Reddit contribution: “As a blind person, this is really annoying, since the voice control of apps is particularly useful and important for access”.
Data protection concerns
Alexa and voice assistants were generally the subject of data protection debates in the past. In April 2018, Alexa received the German Big Brother Award in the Consumer Protection category because it was regarded as a “listening interface”. In addition, cases in which Amazon was accused of improper handling of the Alexa recordings. The language recordings have already been used as evidence in criminal processes.
Amazon explains to the online magazine T3N: “The Alexa experience is designed to protect our customers’ privacy and keep their data safe, and that will not change. We will concentrate on the data protection tools and controls that our customers use most frequently and that work well with generative AI experiences that are dependent on the processing performance of the secure cloud of Amazon.
J. Vogel / Redaktion Finanzen.net
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