Amazon has sold more than 600 million Alexa-enabled devices, and the company is expanding the ecosystem with new products and Alexa+. That scale makes the question of whether Alexa is always eavesdropping relevant to consumers and businesses alike.
According to Amazon, the devices are not recording everything. They continuously listen for acoustic patterns matching the wake word, similar to recognizing a name through earplugs. Only after the wake word is detected does the device record audio and send it to the cloud.
Users can reduce data collection by muting the microphone or changing voice recording retention settings in the Alexa app. Options include keeping recordings for 3 or 18 months, keeping until manual deletion, or not retaining them at all. However, deletion only affects Amazon's cloud; third-party devices may still hold data.