My girlfriend gave me an Alexa assistant as a gift with all good will, since she knows I like technology. I know in terms of privacy it is garbage, however I wonder if there is a safe way to use some functions of this device, perhaps without internet. Some way to hack it or something, do you guys know something about this?
Fast search gave me this ,replacing with open source firmware Mycroft https://hackaday.com/2021/03/22/amazon-echo-gets-open-source-brain-transplant/
I had a google thing which I used as a speaker for a bit. If it has Bluetooth, you could just not let it connect to the internet? As an assistant I found it useless, even without privacy concerns, but as a speaker it was alright.
It's nice that you are trying to find a use for it though! Hopefully it works out long term and you could talk about it the privacy stuff before you get a Facebook Portal next
