Your Amazon Echo is losing the ability to process Alexa commands on-device

Amazon finally announced the highly anticipated generative AI-powered upgrade for Alexa late last month. The new and improved voice assistant, dubbed Alexa Plus, is scheduled to roll out in early access later this month, giving users access to new capabilities, like a more conversational experience, personal memory, smarter music and video controls, visual understanding, and more. However, it’s also dropping support for a key feature.

Amazon recently sent an email to Alexa users (via Reddit), highlighting that it will soon disable the on-device processing feature previously available on select Echo devices. Per the email, the ‘Do Not Send Voice Recordings’ feature, which allowed compatible devices to process Alexa commands locally, will no longer be available starting March 28, 2025.