For years, Alexa had a privacy setting that let users stop their voice interactions from being saved to Amazon’s cloud. It wasn’t advertised prominently, but it existed: “Do Not Send Voice Recordings.” If you found it and enabled it, your audio stayed local and wasn’t transmitted to Amazon’s servers.
That setting is gone.
With the rollout of Alexa+, Amazon has restructured how voice data works across Echo devices. All voice interactions now go to the cloud for processing. The local processing option has been removed, and there is no equivalent opt-out in the new system.
What Changed With Alexa+
Alexa+ is Amazon’s AI-enhanced version of Alexa, announced at CES 2026 and rolled out through the first half of the year. It brings a substantially more capable conversational AI, agentic features that can take multi-step actions on your behalf, and better memory of past interactions within a session.
The trade-off is architecture. The original Alexa processed many requests locally or with minimal cloud data, and gave users granular controls over what got stored and transmitted. Alexa+ requires cloud processing for its more advanced capabilities, and Amazon has restructured the privacy settings to match that requirement.
The most significant change: as of March 28, the “Do Not Send Voice Recordings” setting was discontinued. Amazon notified users through the Alexa app and the Alexa Privacy Dashboard, but the notifications were easy to miss. Many users discovered the change only when looking for a setting that was no longer there.
What Amazon Now Collects
Under the Alexa+ model, the following is transmitted to Amazon’s cloud:
- All voice recordings, processed by Amazon’s AI models on AWS infrastructure
- Conversation history, which Alexa+ uses to maintain context across sessions
- Usage patterns — which features you use, how often, and what kinds of requests you make
- Smart home device interactions — if you have connected devices, their usage is logged in connection with voice commands
- Location and time context, used to personalize responses
Amazon says this data is processed on secure AWS infrastructure, and the Alexa Privacy Dashboard still lets users review and delete their voice history. Automatic deletion options — 3 months or 18 months — remain available. But the option to prevent recordings from being sent in the first place, which was the more fundamental control, is no longer available in the system.
The Silent Upgrade Problem
A separate concern came from how the upgrade was deployed: Amazon silently upgraded thousands of Echo devices linked to Prime accounts to Alexa+ without presenting an opt-in prompt. The firmware pushed automatically, the app branding updated, and users found themselves running Alexa+ and its associated data model without making a deliberate choice to switch.
For users who had specifically configured their devices under the old privacy model — including those who had enabled “Do Not Send Voice Recordings” — the automatic upgrade reset their setup without explicit consent.
Amazon’s position is that Alexa+ is an improvement, and the new system’s capabilities justify the data architecture it requires. That may be true on its own terms. But a substantial privacy control being removed via an automatic firmware update, without a clear opt-in moment, is a different kind of change than a user deciding to upgrade for new features and accepting the associated trade-offs.
Prime subscribers who had never explicitly agreed to the Alexa+ terms found their devices running a different system with a different data model.
What You Can Still Control
The Alexa Privacy Dashboard remains functional and includes several meaningful controls, even if the most fundamental opt-out is gone.
Review and delete voice history:
- Open the Alexa app
- Tap More → Settings → Alexa Privacy
- Tap Review Voice History to see stored recordings
- Delete individual recordings, or clear all recordings from a time period
Set automatic deletion:
- In Alexa Privacy, tap Manage Your Alexa Data
- Under “How long to save recordings,” choose 3 months or 18 months, or select Don’t save recordings
Note: “Don’t save recordings” is not the same as the old opt-out. Recordings are still sent to Amazon and processed by Alexa+. The difference is that they aren’t retained long-term after processing. This limits the historical record but doesn’t prevent transmission.
Disable ad personalization:
- In Alexa Privacy, tap Manage How Your Data Improves Alexa
- Turn off “Use of voice recordings” and “Use messages to improve transcriptions” where available in your region
Disable Alexa+ conversation memory:
- In Alexa app settings, look for Alexa+ Memory or Conversation History
- Disabling this prevents Alexa+ from using previous interactions for context, which also limits some personalized features
The Broader Pattern
What happened with Alexa+ is a version of something that recurs across consumer AI: a feature upgrade that expands capability also expands data collection, and the privacy controls that existed for the older version either disappear or get restructured around the new data model.
Google has faced similar questions as Gemini becomes more integrated into Android and Google Photos. Apple’s addition of Apple Intelligence introduced Private Cloud Compute as an attempt to handle this tension differently — processing AI requests in a dedicated cloud environment designed not to log or retain them. The approaches differ significantly in what happens to data after a request is made.
But Alexa is in a distinctive position because it lives in the home, processes everything spoken within earshot, and has always relied on cloud connectivity. The original promise of privacy controls was that you could limit what that ambient listening produced in terms of stored data. Alexa+ narrows those controls while expanding what the device does with what it hears.
Practical Options for Users Who Find This Unacceptable
Mute the microphone. Echo devices have a physical mute button that cuts the microphone at the hardware level. When muted, nothing is recorded or transmitted. This eliminates Alexa’s utility as a hands-free device but is the only hardware-level control available.
Reduce what you ask Alexa. Using Alexa primarily as a smart home controller — lights, timers, music playback — limits what gets stored. Routine device commands don’t carry the personal context that conversational AI interactions do. The risk profile of “turn off the kitchen lights” is different from that of a session where you’re discussing schedules, health questions, or financial decisions.
Keep personal content separate from voice interfaces. If you’re processing notes, documents, reminders, or personal memories, keeping that content in a dedicated storage layer you trust is a straightforward way to limit the overlap with voice-assistant data collection. The practical division is: use Alexa for home automation and ambient queries; store personal content somewhere with explicit data controls.
What Amazon Says
Amazon’s official position is that Alexa+ processes data in AWS with industry-standard security, never sells voice data to third parties, and maintains the Alexa Privacy Dashboard so users can review and delete their data. Amazon is GDPR-compliant for EU users and operates under CCPA in California.
These are meaningful protections. But they are not equivalent to what “Do Not Send Voice Recordings” offered, which was not sharing the data in the first place.
The controls that remain are about limiting retention and use after data has already been transmitted. The control that’s gone was about preventing transmission from the start. That distinction is the core of what changed.
The Takeaway
If you’ve had an Echo device for several years, the privacy settings you configured when you first set it up may no longer reflect how the device currently works. Alexa+ may be running on your device without you having explicitly chosen it, under a data model with fewer controls than the version you originally agreed to.
Checking the Alexa Privacy Dashboard, setting automatic deletion to the shortest available window, and muting the device when it’s not in use are the options currently available. They’re worth taking deliberately, even if they’re not as comprehensive as what existed before.
The home devices that are always listening have always required some level of trust in the company that operates them. What changed with Alexa+ is the extent to which users can limit what that trust entails.