Wake Word

"Ok, Google, what's the weather?" "Alexa, when is my order arriving?" "Hey Siri, open the DoorDash app." These are all words commonly said in the home. Google and Amazon are large competitors when it comes to home voice assistants. Google has the Google Home and Amazon has the Amazon Alexa. Apple has Siri, one of the most commonly used mobile voice assistants. When you need to know anything, all you have to do is call out for their attention. It's quite convenient. This can be a problem, though, when it comes to privacy: they're always listening.

How does my voice assistant function?

Voice assistants such as Google Home, Amazon Alexa, and Siri use speech recognition to determine what you're looking for. According to this article, your voice is translated into wavelengths. Computers cannot hear and interpret traditional languages such as English, French, or Spanish. They instead have to use past examples of speech and correlate wavelengths with words it has heard before. So, in order to hear their wake word, they're required to always be listening for those wavelengths.

After they determine that they've been called for, it's simply instructions that they are required to follow. If you ask Siri to open an app for you, it will go through a macro to complete that instruction set. In recent days, they've also added Generative Artificial Intelligence to many of these voice assistants. For example, Amazon's Alexa now has been "upgraded" to Alexa+ in recent months. Questions asked to Alexa+ are routed through an LLM (Large Language Model) which will then be translated into a voice and your Alexa will respond to you.

Why is this a privacy concern?

As I said before, they're always listening. No matter what you say, your microphone is on and recording to determine if you're saying a wake word. If you don't trust the company that produced your phone, which you really shouldn't, you could believe that all of your interactions with people are routed to their servers.

According to Forbes, Apple was recently involved in a class action lawsuit alleging that their voice assistant, Siri, was eavesdropping on conversations without the wake word being said. The plaintiffs also accused Apple of selling the data collected to advertisers. Apple agreed later to pay $95 million; that's not even a slap on the wrist compared to Apple's $4.51 trillion market cap at the time of writing this. Apple easily got away with listening in on private conversations via their voice assistant and potentially selling that data to advertisers. Ever get suggested products you've never been interested in until recently? It's possible that your voice assistant was listening in on your conversation to know what you're wanting to buy next.

What can you do?

I will be honest here. I don't think there's much that you can do if you want to continue using your smart phone. Unless you rip the microphone out of your phone, it's possible that it's always listening, even if you have those settings turned off. If you have a Google Home or an Amazon Alexa, consider removing it from your home, or at least move it away from important communication areas. Keep in mind that anything that has a microphone in it and Wi-Fi or internet access, whether that be your laptop, your portable speaker, or your TV remote, has the potential of listening in on your conversations.

You can also talk to your representatives. It's possible that they haven't heard of the privacy concerns of their devices. Inform them politely on the problems that arise with Big Tech listening at all times.