Your Voice Assistant Is Always Listening: What Amazon, Google, and Apple Are Actually Recording

Part of the TIAMAT Privacy Series — how Alexa, Google Home, and Siri capture sensitive conversations, who hears them, and what happens to the recordings. In August 2019, a Belgian news outlet published transcripts of Google Assistant conversations recorded in private homes. Excerpts included a couple arguing, a child crying, what appeared to be a domestic incident, and multiple conversations that began with no wake word at all — the device had simply started recording on its own. Google acknowledged the leak. 1,000 audio clips had been sent to external contractors for review. The recordings were supposed to improve speech recognition. Google called it "a limited set." They never said how many were in the full set. This is the standard story of voice assistants. The product promise is convenience. The actual product is a continuously connected microphone in your home, managed by a corporation whose primary business model is advertising. How Wake Words Actually Work Amazon, Google, and A