Amazon Alexa: All voice recordings are to be stored in the cloud and analyzed

Amazon confirms experts' fears that the US company is at least accepting losses in the protection of user privacy with the launch of its new Alexa+ digital assistance system. The company informed customers by email on Friday: Users of the Echo smart speakers would no longer be able to set them to process Alexa requests locally from March 28, 20250. This means that recordings of all voice commands directed to Alexa via Echo speakers and smart displays will be automatically sent to Amazon and processed and analyzed in its cloud service AWS.

The hyperscaler apparently sent the email specifically to users who currently still have the "Do not send voice recordings" setting activated on their Echo devices, reports Ars Technica magazine. The reason for this is: "As we are expanding Alexa's capabilities with generative AI features based on the computing power of Amazon's secure cloud, we have decided to no longer support this feature." Alexa+ is based on several major language models such as the in-house development Nova and Claude from Anthropic. Amazon has a stake in this AI company. The pimped assistant should be able to understand human speech much better and be just as easy to use as the ChatGPT bots from OpenAI or Google Gemini.

Amazon is also promoting Alexa+ with the ability to better recognize who is speaking to the system ("Voice ID"). This allows the assistant to manage calendar events, reminders and music preferences for different users, for example. Amazon had already let it be known: "If you choose not to save voice recordings, Voice ID may not work." It is now certain that this feature cannot be used without cloud access.

Many a misstep with Alexa recordings

Researchers have long complained that, together with Alexa, the Roomba robot vacuum cleaner and the Ring smart doorbell formed Amazon's eyes and ears, which were used to monitor entire districts in smart cities. The company has also made a few missteps with voice recordings. In 2023, Amazon agreed to pay civil penalties amounting to 25 million US dollars. The company had permanently stored recordings of children's interactions with Alexa. The Echo manufacturer also allows its employees to listen to Alexa voice recordings. This should enable better training of the system. Alexa recordings are also used in criminal proceedings in the USA. There are also calls in this country for investigators to have access to the assistant.

Amazon now emphasized in the email that Alexa requests from users are deleted by default "after processing". Commands "are always encrypted during transmission to Amazon's secure cloud", it continued. The computer clouds are "equipped with several security measures" to protect personal information. Customers can also continue to make various privacy settings online via the Alexa Privacy Dashboard.

(nie)