Amazon finally makes your talks with Alexa completely private
Amazon is on stage announcing new hardware and services for its September 28 Devices&Services keynote, and one of the focus is privacy.
"From adding new ways to ask Alexa about your privacy settings, to providing more granular information about your household’s voice history, we are continuing to give customers greater transparency and control over their data," it waxes poetic.
Those of you who are in possession 4th-generation Echo and EchoShow 10, the ones with the homebrew AZ1 Neural Edge processor, will have the option to change Alexa's privacy settings to have all the voice requests processed on-device.
That's right, instead of worrying you have turned your life over completely to Amazon, your voice requests directed to its Alexa personal assistant will have their audio recorded and processed exclusively on the device in your home. Sorry, American customers only for now.
Your personal audio recording would thus not be uploaded to the cloud and you can rest assured that Amazon won't be snooping on requests in order to tailor your shopping experience. The "customers’ voice recordings are also automatically deleted after the on-device processing," claims Amazon. Whew.
Things that are NOT allowed: