Amazon’s Alexa-powered devices store recordings of your voice to improve the accuracy of the results it provides and improve its overall functionality. You can easily access these recordings from the Alexa app and also delete all recordings directly from your Amazon account.
In light of the recent fiasco surrounding Amazon’s digital voice assistant ‘accidentally’ recording a couple’s private conversation and sending it to one of their contacts, you may be wondering if it’s safe to let Amazon store your voice recordings in its database. While we cannot comment on the company’s security standards when it comes to recordings, we can give you the option to review and delete all of your recordings.
If you’re an Alexa user and aren’t comfortable with Amazon keeping recordings of your voice, there are two ways to delete recordings. The first method, which involves deleting records directly from the system. Amazon websitedeletes all records.
The second method, which involves using the Alexa app, will let you review all the recordings and choose the ones you want to delete. Both methods are detailed below and you can choose either one.
Method 1: Delete All Records
To delete all your records stored in Amazon’s database, you must first log into your Amazon account.
After logging in, you need to select ‘Manage Your Content and Devices’ from the drop-down menu on the main page.
On the ‘Manage Your Content and Devices’ page, you need to select the ‘Your Devices’ tab and find your Alexa supported devices.
You can now click the menu button next to your Alexa powered device and select ‘Manage audio recordings’.
This will bring up a notification explaining why Amazon is keeping the audio recordings, as well as a warning that deleting the recordings could spoil the experience. Here you confirm that you want to delete records and all your records are deleted from Amazon’s database.
Method 2: Selective Deletion
If you’re worried about hindering your Alexa experience by deleting all recordings but don’t want Amazon to keep everything it’s recorded so far, you can follow the steps below to review all your recordings and choose which ones you want. to delete.
To review all your recordings, you need to open the Alexa app on your connected device and go to the Settings menu. Inside Settings, you need to go to the “Alexa Account” section and tap on the “History” option.
The ‘History’ option lists all your voice interactions with Alexa and you can tap on individual recordings to get all the details, hear the recordings, provide any feedback on the recordings or delete them. If you find a record you want to delete, you can tap the ‘Remove This Entry’ button inside that record and remove it from Amazon’s database.
Now that you know how to delete your voice recordings, let us remind you of the consequences of deleting recordings. As Amazon uses recordings to improve Alexa’s voice recognition for both your individual setup and the Alexa ecosystem in general, you may encounter some issues interacting with Alexa as all of what the digital assistant learns will be reset over time.
If you still want to delete your records but also want to avoid such a situation, we recommend that you go to the second method and only delete the records you don’t want Amazon to keep.
