this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2025
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For 99.97% of Alexa users nothing will change.
This is the point people are missing, because of headlines like this that have been implying or saying outright that "everything Alwxa hears you say" will be sent to Amazon from now on. Completely false true. As explained in the article (please read it) what you tell Alexa to do *after saying "Alexa" *will be sent to the cloud for processing, as already happens 99.97% of the time. The only exceptions until now have been for 0.03% of users who set an option to process all voice commands locally (which limits the quality of the response, since the Echo dot has limited processing power). Starting today this option won't work anymore - so if you are one of those 0.03% of users, you'll be affected. If you're one of the 99.97% of users, nothing will change. Amazon will receive the same information it always has.
The amount of misinformation that's been circulating about this is really mind-boggling, and some people will probably douchevote me for trying to clear it up. Note: I am NOT defending any Amazon business policies, working conditions, strikebreaking, actions or words of Jeff Bezos, or anything else. But I'm absolutely sure some people will see it that way, cuz we're not supposed to object to "good" misinformation.
But if it's listening for "Alexa" and that listening happens in Amazon's cloud server, they could record everything that is happening at all times with very little extra work.
That's always been the case, and it still a potential security issue. Remember when the NSA was tapping webcams without even turning the light on. Anything plugged in with a speaker or camera like your TV, your remote, your computer, etc. is potentially vulnerable.
Yes I absolutely agree. Just pointing out that the comment I replied to is false, it gives me the impression that the author thinks that they aren't being spied on by Amazon when they certainly are.
Trigger word analysis happens locally. It's when that's triggered that audio gets sent to cloud
Of course, and for all we know they're already recording everything Alexa hears, so there doesn't seem to be any reason to fuss over this announcement.