Amazon Alexa to delete voice recordings on command to fight privacy concerns
Fighting privacy concerns and data collection suspicions, Amazon has added support for new voice commands to let users ask Alexa to delete previous voice recordings.
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Users can now say, "Alexa, delete everything I said today" or "Alexa, delete what I just said", and the assistant will wipe all the recordings it stores on Amazon's servers, says a report in The Verge on Wednesday.
Amazon stores recordings of every request users make to an Alexa device, theoretically, to help improve the voice recognition service and other features.
Until now, users were required to go into the app to delete Alexa recordings one by one, or they had to go through Amazon's website to delete all recordings in one go.
Alexa's new feature comes after some US Senators along with a group of 19 consumer and public health advocates accused Amazon of recording and saving conversations that take place around its smart speakers, urging the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate the case.
Today's new features don't thoroughly address those concerns, but make deleting voice data a bit easier.
The e-commerce giant has not specified whether it would make more specific deletion voice commands, like commands to delete all data or the data of past week or month.
Amazon is also launching an "Alexa Privacy Hub", supposed to offer an easy way to learn how Alexa works and find privacy controls. The hub is fairly bare-bones, but it does offer a relatively quick way to find a link to delete voice recordings, the report added.
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