Mar 19, 2025 | Posted by Abdul-Rahman Oladimeji
Amazon Echo devices, which give users access to the firm's Alexa personal assistant via voice commands, will stop offering local processing capabilities on March 28, at which point all voice recordings will be sent to the cloud to be processed.
The move comes as Amazon is launching Alexa+, a subscription-based AI assistant. In a blog post, Alexa+ is described by Amazon as being "more conversational, smarter, [and] personalized." Trained on LLMs on Amazon Bedrock, the new Alexa will be able to understand "half-formed thoughts" and "colloquial expressions." Amazon also claims that Alexa+ can be proactive - offering an example of "suggesting you start your commute early when there’s heavy traffic, or telling you a gift you wanted to buy is on sale."
In a statement from Amazon, the company said: "The Alexa experience is designed to protect our customers’ privacy and keep their data secure, and that’s not changing. We’re focusing on the privacy tools and controls that our customers use most and work well with generative AI experiences that rely on the processing power of Amazon’s secure cloud. Customers can continue to choose from a robust set of tools and controls, including the option to not save their voice recordings at all. We’ll continue learning from customer feedback, and building privacy features on their behalf.”
