Unfortunately, it does connect to the cloud, but as far as I know, it's not under the control of any big-tech yet (although, I could, admittedly, be naive in that regard). I have the 3, which isn't alexa-enabled, but the 4 is. It's a nice UI that's easy to program, and has a lot of options like room sensors that detect temp and whether the room is occupied (some may not like that, but the sensors are an add-on). I suppose I'd rate it a 3 or 4 on an intrusiveness scale of 10.