Buried in this morning’s Echo Show 5 announcement are a couple of new security features worth highlighting. In addition to the inclusion of a built-in camera shutter on the new smart display are a pair of Echo commands that let users delete voice recordings with an Alexa command.
“Alexa, delete what I said today” rolls out to Alexa users starting today. “Alexa, delete what I just said” will be arriving in the U.S. in the coming weeks and other countries where the smart assistant is available in the next month. Amazon has offered the ability to delete recordings via the app for some time now, but this brings the functionality to the front with a simple via command.
The process works similarly to deleting recordings via the app, starting the deletion process immediately.
While the company has long contended that it doesn’t actively record conversations and protects records on encrypted servers, the always-on nature of Echo and similar smart home products have raised alarms among security analysts and regular users alike.
The addition of the feature is clearly a response to such pushback and an attempt for Amazon to let users be a bit more proactive about controlling how Amazon treats their conversations.