Louisiana Tech Warning: Everything Said Around Your Alexa Will Now Be Sent to Amazon

Time for Louisiana residents to brace for a big change to something they might have in the room with them right now.

In a move that's rocking both the tech community and customers, Amazon has announced that it will shut off one of its most popular features. This is an ability that many consumer grade in-home Alexa devices have been running for years, and helped make users feel just a little safer. But as of this week, that option will be gone.

Amazon announced this month that it will stop letting Alexa devices remain "local", meaning everything you say around your Alexa device will now be "sent to the cloud for processing"...in other words, Alexa will now be listening to everything said around it, and sending those recordings directly to Amazon.

Previously, users could option to have their Alexa keep everything inside their home and on their local network. This was a privacy feature that was universally loved by Alexa users. But now, due to Amazon's demand to make its AI technology a part of the puzzle, the company will be feeding every word into its AI monster.

As Jamey Tucker, a Consumer Technology Reporter for What the Tech?, has stated:

"It’s worth noting that Amazon’s Alexa project has reportedly been a financial drain for the company. The integration of generative AI and the new recording policy are part of an effort to make the Echo devices more useful and potentially introduce a paid subscription model with enhanced features."

Sadly, this looks like the path that Amazon is taking. Not only are they now going to create a massive privacy blackhole inside homes and businesses, but they're doing it to fundamentally change why people like Alexa in the first place. Turning the Alexa devices that people have set up their home routines on into pay-to-play machines. Want to use it to turn your "smart" lights on? Sorry, can't do that without the paid subscription.

Lets take a further step back and consider what this means in public settings. If you go into a coffee joint in Bossier City, or a clothing store in Lafayette, and they have Alexa devices in there, are you now being recorded and sent to Amazon without your consent? If a steakhouse in Shreveport has a couple Alexa devices installed, will they be violating your privacy by recording the conversations you're having and sending them off to Amazon?

With the AI technology involved, these devices could automatically recognize your voice, establish who you are, and match up your private conversations in a doctors office with your Amazon profile, just because the waiting room might have an Alexa device in there. These are serious concerns that a state legislature might have to look at if this is going to be the big tech play.

So its time for folks across Louisiana, and everywhere really, to decide if having Alexa record all of your conversations and pass them along is worth it to host the devices in your home. Especially if the things you want to keep them around for end up going into a subscription model in the long run.