Amazon has disabled two key privacy features in its Alexa smart speakers, in a push to introduce artificial intelligence-powered “agentic capabilities” and turn a profit from the popular devices.
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.
Trigger word analysis happens locally. It’s when that’s triggered that audio gets sent to cloud
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.
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.
What makes you think this wasn’t the case the whole time? Try speaking with it off-line. There is no off-line. Don’t be naive.
…Good thing though, is that nobody cares about your data except you. It’s being sent over purely because of the compute resources required.
How about things you say near an Alexa smart speaker?
It’s the same picture.
They doing it starting now? And not since the Alexa?
They are removing the “process recordings locally” option, which 0.03% of users had enabled. Not much of a change.
They are gonna hear a ton of cussing when I tell her to turn on my lamp and she starts an audio book about lamps instead.
Just regularly tell it to go fuck itself and tell it to tell Jeff Bezos to fuck himself.
I wonder what would happen if you recorded a few dozen phrases like that, and then had them play randomly for eternity into a few Alexa devices. Would Amazon ban you?
I was kind of thinking along those same lines, but what if millions of people did it… Would it matter? Could a protest like that work or make Amazon see the error of their ways? I doubt it, but it would be fun nonetheless.
Alexa, fuck you bezos, you and your AI can eat a full bag of dicks.
Alternatively, don’t have one cos he doesn’t give a shit since you already paid him
So should I stop telling my Alexa all the hypothetical ways I would kill Jeff Bezos then?
will ?
