Hey Minnesota, Your Alexa is Going to Send All Recordings to Amazon in 4 Days

In most homes, you'll find these handy little things called smart speakers. I use mine mostly to set timers while I'm cooking but it's also so convenient when you can't remember how many teaspoons are in a tablespoon.

I personally have an Amazon Alexa in my kitchen and it's really useful. However, these smart speakers can make people really uneasy.

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Why Smart Speakers Make People Uneasy

Smart speakers may make someone feel uncomfortable because technically the device has to be listening to you at all times in order to hear the cue like 'Alexa' or 'Hey Google'.

Once you say the cue then it'll activate and will also record what you ask. This helps the system learn how to better answer your questions, however, this involves those recordings then being sent to the company behind the smart speaker. So with Alexa devices that would be Amazon.

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There is an option to not have your recordings sent to the company, but that privacy setting is going to go away.

Amazon Removing 'Do Not Send Voice Recordings' Setting

If you have an Amazon Alexa device (Echo Dot, Echo Show, etc.), on Friday, March 28th, there will no longer be an option to not have your voice recordings sent to Amazon.

USA Today reports that all recordings, as of Friday, will be sent to Amazon a processed through "'Amazon’s secure cloud'".

Why Amazon is Removing the 'Do Not Send Voice Recordings' Setting

The reason behind discontinuing this feature is to allow generative AI to properly analyze questions we ask, responses we receive, and if we liked the response or not so future use is more helpful. I think that's great and totally makes sense but I also understand how spooky this all sounds.

Amazon also reports, according to The Associated Press, that the 'do not send voice recordings' wasn't used much at all, only enabled by 0.03% of users.

If it still makes you a bit uncomfortable, the best option is to turn on the 'don't save recordings' option. This will get automatically turned on if you already use the 'do not send voice recordings' setting.

The 'don't save recordings' option will still allow your recordings to be processed in the Amazon cloud but after that, your recordings will be deleted.