Now, you can ask Alexa to forget conversations: Here's how
Alexa, the digital voice assistant from Amazon, is getting a handy new privacy feature, one you can use to delete your voice recordings instantly. Yes, starting today, you can simply instruct Alexa to forget the conversations you recently had. The capability will save you from the trouble of digging through Alexa settings, but there are some caveats. Here's everything you need to know.
'Alexa, delete everything I said today'
As many already know, everything you speak to Alexa is recorded and stored. The recordings are kept for improving Alexa's voice recognition capabilities, but you can delete them by going into the voice history settings of Alexa app. Now, with the new feature, you can do the exact same thing by simply saying, "Alexa, delete everything I said today."
However, you can only delete recordings for a single day
While this option could come handy in deleting Alexa conversations instantly, it is worth noting that it works only for a single day. When you ask for deletion, the assistant will only remove things recorded since midnight. This means you can't say something like "Alexa, delete everything I've said this year" and get everything recorded removed once and for all.
Deletion doesn't happen for full 24 hours
Also, as the deletion works for recordings since midnight, the feature doesn't always remove recordings for full 24 hours. For that, you'd have to say the deletion command after 11 pm at night.
Also, the feature doesn't work by default
Notably, the ability to delete recordings through voice commands isn't enabled by default. To start using the feature, you'd first have to turn "Enable deletion by voice" toggle on by opening the Alexa app and heading over to Settings > Alexa Account > Alexa Privacy > Review Voice History. This is also where you'll find the catalog of all recordings and delete them manually.
More improvements on the way
Amazon has said that it would improve this feature by adding the capability to delete individual commands by saying, "Alexa, delete what I just said." Now, this is useful but the feature would be truly helpful if the company offers a way to delete voice recordings from the beginning. Without that option, users would have to call Alexa every day to delete recordings.
