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Amazon Echo stores your voice commands. Here's how Alexa can delete them

You can now use your voice to delete audio recordings from your Amazon account.

Jason Cipriani Contributing Writer, ZDNet
Jason Cipriani is based out of beautiful Colorado and has been covering mobile technology news and reviewing the latest gadgets for the last six years. His work can also be found on sister site CNET in the How To section, as well as across several more online publications.
Jason Cipriani
2 min read
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Following the discovery that Amazon keeps text logs of every voice command you've given Alexa , even after you've removed voice recordings, the company's made it possible to delete your Amazon audio history with a voice command. The new feature, announced Wednesday alongside a new Echo Show, forgoes the need to dig through the Alexa app or navigate Amazon's website to delete the voice recordings kept for each interaction with an Echo device linked to your Amazon account.

There are two new commands, one that should be available now, and another that's "coming soon" that will make it possible to delete the last thing you said.

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You'll need to enable delete by voice in the Alexa app before you can use the new privacy feature. 

Screenshots by Jason Cipriani/CNET

To use the new feature, you'll first need to enable "Deletion by voice" in the Alexa app on your phone. Find the setting by opening the Alexa app and then going to Settings > Alexa Account > Alexa Privacy > Review voice history and slide the toggle next to Enable deletion by voice to the On position.

Once that's done, you can tell Alexa, "Delete everything I said today." 

To which it will reply, "You'd like to delete the recordings of everything said to me today, is that right?" Confirm that's what you want, and a few seconds later your day's recordings will be gone.

Watch this: You deleted your Alexa voice recordings, but the text records are still there

In the coming weeks, Amazon says it will enable the command "Delete what I just said" to remove the recording of your last interaction with Alexa. To be clear, this new feature doesn't delete the text transcripts Amazon keeps, but the company is working on a solution to remove all text transcripts for all of its systems.

If you want to delete more than the last thing you said, or the past day's worth of recordings, you can follow these steps to delete as much Amazon Echo data as you can. It only takes a few minutes to clear your account's entire history.

All of Amazon's Alexa smart speakers

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