Alexa-equipped speakers contain the ability to access to your network-connected printers. Giving you the ability to print something using nothing but your voice.
At first, it might sound a little concerning to give something like that access to the printer, but fear not, you won’t start getting odd print jobs sent to it unless you ask for it.
You can ask Alexa to do a number of things like “Alexa, print my shopping list.” You can do the same for your to-do list, as well as a number of specialty items like “print lined paper” or “print graph paper.” For kids, you can “print an easy maze” or “print a daily Sudoku”, all of which opens a lot of opportunity for instant solutions or entertainment for yourself and others.
It seems the feature comes automatically enabled for some models. If this isn’t the case for yours, you’ll have to search for the brand in the skills section of the Alexa app (ie, HP, Brother, Epson, etc) and look for the Alexa Skill related to yours. Alexa can very quickly detect wired and wireless models that are directly tied into the network vs attached to a computer.
You should also get an email from Amazon (Alexa) showing that it had found the printer and discusses this very thing. If you did not get an email, check your devices within the Alexa app to make sure it shows. If there is nothing there, then make sure your printer is discoverable by other devices (ie, computers, tablets, smartphones, etc) on the network, and then ask Alexa to search for new devices when done.
You are able to disable this if you don’t need the feature or it bothers you that Alexa has access to such a thing (or you have mischievous young ones running around who are far too clever for their age). To do so, simply head over to your Alexa app on your mobile device, find the printer under “devices” and remove it.
