When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Heres how it works.
Amazonis turning off the ability to process voice requests locally.
It’s a seemingly major privacy pivot and one that some Alexa users might not appreciate.
That’s what’s happening, but let’s unpack the general freakout.
In 2019, there were reports ofAmazon employees listening to customer recordings.
They were doing so to put “processing on the edge,” and reduce latency and bandwidth consumption.
Turns out it wasn’t easy Amazon described it as a massive undertaking.
The processing power that these few Echos had was not to handle the full Alexa query locally.
The local audio is then deleted.
Amazon gets the text it needs but not the audio.
But that’s not how the Alexa experience works for most Echo owners.
Most consumers are not making those kinds of adjustments.
This brings us back to why Amazon is doing this.
Alexa+ is a far smarter and more powerful AI with generative, conversational capabilities.
Well continue learning from customer feedback, and building privacy features on their behalf.
Amazon is simply falling into line in preparation for Alexa+.
