So now for a lot of Echo devices, you can’t opt out of cloud processing. Although AI training wouldn’t be out of the question and Amazon may very well be doing that, I think Adguard might be kind of clickbaity here, because there is no definitive evidence of that. They say here that that data is immediately deleted once processed by their servers.
What Amazon’s doing is pretty shady, but this just seems to be speculation.
Does this lower Adguard’s credibility?
- If you use any alexa / echo devices you are forfeiting all of your data for any and all purposes
- Adguard is selling a product and thus is incentivized to write clickbaity articles to get more eyes on their site
Both of these statements can be true
Yeah I understand that, I was also wondering if anyone knew more concrete evidence for Alexa AI training, or if anyone would appreciate the info that you can’t opt out of cloud processing
Key points from the Make Use Of article:
- You Can’t Store Requests Locally
- What You Say Could Be Used to Train AI
- Voice Recording Feature Limitations
- You’re Upgrading to Alexa+ Whether You Like It or Not
I don’t see why it should.
They are reporting on the same story that both the tech media and the mainstream media have been reporting on for the past ~month.
Although AI training wouldn’t be out of the question and Amazon may very well be doing that [but] there is no definitive evidence
As I read it, Amazon pretty much acknowledges/states that that will be one of the ways in which they will use your voice recordings:
“As we continue to expand Alexa’s capabilities with generative AI features that rely on the processing power of Amazon’s secure cloud, we have decided to no longer [allow users to opt-out of off-device processing of voice recordings]”
Using your voice recordings to train AI doesn’t appear to be anything new or especially secret, here is a short excerpt from a 2023 Bloomberg TV interview of a senior vice president at Amazon:
“Users would be volunteering their voice data and conversations for Amazon’s LLM training purposes”
What has changed (as I understand it) isn’t so much how Amazon will or may use your data, I think they’ve probably been using user data to train AI for years, the difference is that up until last month concerned users who bothered to dig through the settings could opt-out of their data being processed remotely on Amazon servers. Now that opt-out has been taken away.
Personally, I’m less concerned whether or not the data is being used to train AI, and more concerned about the other ways your voice data can be used for profiling, tracking, and advertising. Training a large language model seems like a lesser concern in comparison. I’m not saying it’s not to be concerned about, I’m saying you should be concerned even if they promised not to use your voice recordings to train AI. Once the data leaves your device, it is out of your control, and we can’t know how that data will be used or exploited now or in the future.
Here are a few of the sources that allude to voice data being used for training AI (among other things presumably) as well as a link to the original 2023 Bloomberg TV interview where this was explicitly stated by an Amazon Exec: