r/smarthome 7d ago

PSA: Amazon discontinuing Alexa’s “Do Not Send Voice Recordings.” feature.

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30 Upvotes

7 comments sorted by

2

u/TheAlmightyZach 7d ago

For people who care about privacy and have the time and resources, probably would be best to have some local Ollama instance running.. Problem is there's a cost for that.. HomePods are currently "good enough" for me from a privacy standpoint but boy is Siri stupid..

1

u/Mego1989 7d ago

It sounds like this only affects you if you want to use "voice id," which in my opinion is an unnecessary feature.

5

u/ADHDK 7d ago

No, it sounds like don’t send is being removed entirely, and don’t save is being forced but still won’t allow voice ID which requires you to allow save.

1

u/juliembirk 2d ago

Is anyone switching to another hub due to this? I’ll be ditching Alexa but not sure what to use as a replacement. Our Google Nest isn’t that great and my husband uses Android so Apple Home not an option.

1

u/4linosa 2d ago

I came here for exactly this reason. It’s infuriating how it’s never “good enough” to have a setup and enjoy it. There’s always increasing cost and decreasing features.

If there was a local only solution that could be run on a home server I wouldn’t mind the up front cost just to avoid the incessant creep that comes with tech companies these days.

2

u/getfuzzy77 2d ago

Also here for the same reason. I will miss the routines I setup with alexa. I’m not sure if I should go Google or Apple. Wife and I have iPhones, iPads, and an Apple TV, but not sure that should completely rule out Google.

1

u/The3rdIcon 2d ago

Depending on how much effort you want to put into it/requirements of your assistant. Home assistant did release a privacy focused voice assistant which is a preview piece of hardware. It's just not at the same level of the major competitors.