Alexa Sends All Voice Commands to the Cloud

It seems we have all become used to voice assistants everywhere we go. Their usefulness is particularly evident for those whose dexterity or eyesight makes using a screen challenging. But in order to provide this convenience they must be listening all the time and nearly all commands require an internet connection. Many news sites began reporting this past month that Amazon was killing off the “local processing” option on their Alexa devices and instead sending all voice commands to the cloud. While this is technically true, the headlines make it seem more dramatic than it really is. This change only affects owners of just three Alexa models (Echo Dot 4, Echo Show 10, & Echo Show 15) that had enough processing power to analyze voices on the device, and only if you had manually set the “Do Not Send Voice Recordings” option in your Alexa app. My guess is that the pool of users who are truly affected is quite small. Additionally, even if you had that setting intentionally enabled your Alexa was still sending the text transcription of your voice to the cloud to generate a response. My takeaway is that the internet-fueled echo chamber (no pun intended) can easily blow things out of proportion, but also that this can be a reminder of how reliant our devices are on the internet and in turn how reliant we are on them.