Amazon Echo to Send All Voice Recordings to the Cloud Starting March 28
Amazon has announced that starting March 28, 2025, all voice recordings from Echo devices will be sent to the company’s cloud, removing the option for local processing of Alexa requests.
According to a report by Ars Technica, Amazon recently notified users who had enabled the “Do Not Send Voice Recordings” setting on their Echo smart speakers and displays, informing them that the privacy feature will no longer be supported.
“As we continue to expand Alexa’s capabilities with generative AI features that rely on the processing power of Amazon’s secure cloud, we have decided to no longer support this feature,” Amazon stated in an email to affected users.
The change coincides with the rollout of Alexa+, a new version of Amazon’s AI-powered voice assistant. However, concerns over privacy and data security remain, especially given Amazon’s history of regulatory scrutiny.
In 2023, the company agreed to pay a $25 million settlement to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over violations related to children’s privacy. With this latest move, privacy advocates and regulators may renew calls for stricter oversight of voice data collection and processing.
