CNET reported a few weeks ago that Amazon is preparing to remove a key privacy setting in its Alexa smart home devices. Today, it goes into effect. Here's what it means.

“Thus, in order to keep that functionality, users will have to manually change ... to your Amazon Echo from March 28 on will ...

Amazon is ending a little-used privacy feature that let some users of its Echo smart speaker prevent their voice commands from going to the company’s cloud.

is making waves. Starting March 28, Alexa Echo users won't be able to block their devices from sending all voice recordings to Amazon for analysis. Just before this privacy change, more than 2,000 ...

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This two-step change means Alexa users need to make a trade-off between privacy and functionality. Put simply, Amazon needs Echo devices to start making money. As US voice assistant expert Joseph ...

I've tried without success to get Amazon.com to show me such a result, but I truly hope the name change becomes ... the various Echo devices were simply speakers, this might make some sense.

Amazon is discontinuing a privacy-focused feature that allowed select Echo devices to process voice requests locally, meaning all voice recordings will now be sent to the cloud before being deleted.

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.