Your smart speakers are listening to you. Here’s how to delete their recordings.

Smart speakers are always listening: How to delete voice records?

The smart speaker is powerful and can complete various tasks from voice broadcasting recipes to controlling door locks. But on the other hand, it may also record your conversations and activities. Privacy first? Don't worry, this article will guide you on how to manage and delete voice data from the three mainstream smart speakers (Amazon Echo, Google Home and Apple HomePod).

To better predict your needs, smart speakers will store your voice commands in the cloud. If you are upset about this, you can view and delete the data.

Amazon Echo

Echo smart speaker is equipped with Amazon artificial intelligence assistant Alexa, which monitors the wake-up word "Alexa". After hearing the wake word, it starts recording the next voice commands and saves these clips to the cloud.

You can't turn off the recording function of the Echo completely because it's its core feature. But if you feel uncomfortable, you can manually stop recording when not in use: just click the microphone button on the top of the device.

To view and delete saved voice clips from Echo, you need to use the Alexa app (for Android and iOS) or the Amazon website. Let's start with the application.

After opening the Alexa app, the homepage will display a list of voice commands you said to the Echo. Amazon provides these records so that you can re-execute past commands and use them to train their natural language processing software. To improve the accuracy and responsiveness of the AI ​​assistant, Amazon encourages users to provide feedback: Click "More" on any entry, and you can select "Yes" to indicate that the text matches what you said, or select "No" to indicate that Alexa misunderstood your voice.

But you open the app not to train Alexa, but to delete its saved data. This is not easy. Amazon allows you to easily delete entries from the app’s homepage – just click “More > Delete Card” – but this won’t delete recordings on Amazon’s servers. To completely delete saved data, you need to perform more complex steps. Click the menu button (three horizontal lines) in the upper left corner and go to Settings > History. On this page, you can select any voice input and play audio clips. If you have a large amount of history, you can sort the entries using the Filter By Date option at the top of the screen. Finally, to delete an entry from the app and Amazon database, select Delete Voice Recording at the bottom of the screen.

You can also delete all recordings at once through the Amazon website. Log in to your account and go to "Accounts and Lists" > Your Content & Devices > Your Devices". On this page, click the button next to your Echo and select Manage Voice Recording. Here you can click the "Delete" button to clear all request records you have made to Alexa. The website does not provide the same fine-grained control as the app, but if you want to clear all data quickly, this is how it works.

Google Home

Like Amazon, Google declares that its smart speakers will only start permanent recordings after you use the "Ok Google" wake word. After wake-up, the speaker saves what you said next, which helps Google improve its voice recognition and understanding.

However, unlike the Echo, if you change several settings, Google Home will stop recording your voice commands. To stop the smart speaker from recording your commands, log in to your Google account and visit the Activity Control webpage. Then turn off the Voice and Audio Activity switch.

As for Google's recorded data, you can view and modify it through the Google Home app (for Android and iOS) or the Google website.

To view recordings through the app, open Google Home, click the menu button in the upper left corner (three horizontal lines), and select "My Activity". The next screen will show all your recent instructions, whether you are sending to the smart speaker itself or to the Google Assistant app on your phone. Click on any entry to see more details: specific words, when and where you said these words, which device you said these words and what responses you received. To delete a recording, click the More (three vertical dots) button in the upper right corner of the entry and select Delete.

You can do similar operations online as well. Log in to your account, go to the Personal Information and Privacy page, and click Go to My Events. This will display your activity logs on multiple Google services, including your browsing behavior on Chrome and your viewing history on YouTube. To isolate Google Home searches, click "Filter by date and product", uncheck all entries except Assistant, and then click the search button at the top. You can also add a date filter if you have a specific time. Similarly, you can delete a single entry by clicking the More button and selecting Delete. Through the website, you can also batch delete all past voice commands: click "Delete activities by date >Delete by date >All times". Then click the All Products drop-down menu and select Assistant from the list. Finally, select "Delete" and a confirmation window will pop up. Click "Delete" again to clear all content.

Apple HomePod

Apple HomePod users do not need to worry too much about privacy. While Apple does log "Hey Siri" voice commands, it analyzes and deletes these logs instead of storing them until you delete them. But this means you can't view the records of requests made to speakers in the past.

The above is the detailed content of Your smart speakers are listening to you. Here’s how to delete their recordings.. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!