Amazon has been under fire from critics concerned about the potential loss of privacy when Alexa hears your every word.

So on a day Amazon unveiled its latest smart speaker with a display – the $89.99 Echo Show 5 – the company announced privacy features that will apply to all its Alexa-infused devices: notably, the ability to ask Alexa to delete the recordings of your voice captured when you summon Alexa for a task or query.

Starting today, you can utter the words, “Alexa, delete what I said today” and recordings from the given day will be erased. In the coming weeks in the U.S. (and later elsewhere), you will be able to say,“ Alexa, delete what I just said,” to wipe out the last request you made.

Amazon separately put the spotlight on a new Alexa Privacy Hub meant to provide transparency around how you can ensure privacy when using Alexa and Echo devices. At the site, Amazon reiterated that Alexa only begins recording and sending your request to its secure cloud servers after hearing the "Alexa" wake word.

California smart speaker bill:California 'anti-eavesdropping' bill seeks to regulate smart speakers

Amazon hasn't said anything about letting you delete your entire history of voice recordings by asking Alexa. For now anyway, you will have to dig into Alexa privacy settings to manually wipe out the past recordings of your interaction with Amazon's digital assistant.

It remains to be seen if these latest privacy measures will quiet Amazon's critics.

An "anti-eavesdropping" bill currently making its way through the California legislature would require companies to get your permission in writing before smart home devices can store your recorded voice. If passed, the bill would also ban smart speaker makers from sharing such recordings with third parties.

Consumer and privacy advocates recently filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission alleging that Amazon was illegally collecting voice recording transcripts and personal information via the youth-oriented Echo Dot Kids Edition version of its Alexa smart speaker. Amazon said at the time that the speaker is compliant with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, known as COPPA.

Last month, Bloomberg reported that a team of Amazon staffers review Alexa audio clips to better help the speaker respond to your commands. Amazon told Bloomberg, “We only annotate an extremely small sample of Alexa voice recordings in order (to) improve the customer experience.”

And CNET has reported that Amazon holds onto text logs of your Alexa recordings even after you delete them.

The new $89.99 Echo Show 5, as with other Echo Show speakers, has a button that lets you disable the microphone and camera. But for the first time, Amazon also added a physical shutter to cover the camera on the Echo Show, following the lead of rival smart speaker makers. You can still converse with Alexa while the camera is covered with your voice getting recorded until you take steps to delete it.

Email: ebaig@usatoday.com; Follow @edbaig on Twitter