Amazon's "Alexa, Delete Everything I Said Today" Command Will Delete Your Voice Recordings

In the past few months, there are many incidences of Amazon Alexa where the device was recording your conversation and sending it to the database. On this, the company claimed that the recording is for the research and machine learning purpose. However, this raises a big question on the privacy of the users. Now Amazon has come up with a new feature which will allow you to command Alexa digital assistant to erase everything that is heard throughout the day.

On May 29, Amazon added this skill to digital assistant Alexa. So according to the report, "Alexa, delete everything I said today" command to the AI will delete everything. This step was taken because a group of US senators along with 19 consumers and public advocates strongly recommended the Federal Trade Commission to investigate about the Amazon's Echo Dot Kids Edition.

According to a CNN report, "They alleged it doesn't follow the law's parental-consent requirement and allow parents to adequately delete their kids' information."

It has also been reported that the California State Assembly is working on a bill which will order smart-speaker makers to take the permission of the consumer before recording or saving any command or conversations.

Just in case you don't know Apple's Siri and Alexa records everything you said after waking them up. Basically, this is to improve artificial intelligence and help the AI to learn new commands. Google also use to do the same but it has changed its default setting and now it will only record if users change the settings to record.

What I think about the new update

It seems that Amazon has taken this move to make the virtual assistant more secure for the users. With the addition of this new voice command, the company allow customers to have control over their privacy.

According to me, this is great skill added to Alexa and with this users can delete the recordings of the conversation with the AI. As a user, I will never want my Echo device to share my recordings with someone sitting at Amazon's headquarter and listing to everything.