I already have phone in my pocket with Google assistant (yes, you can switch it off, but is it truly off?) Thats why I decided that Alexa is not a big deal.
Phones have a security/privacy advantage, because being battery powered and (potentially) using metered data, the cost of recording everything and shipping interesting parts of the audio to the corporate mothership would be immediate, in customer complaints about battery life and data usage.
Wifi/ethernet and AC-connected devices change the risk/benefit calculation significantly.
Alexa or Google Assistant on a phone is therefore not really the same thing as Alexa or Google on a standalone plug-in device.
For example, a google phone (depending on model/setup) and Google mini might both listening all the time for "Hey google". Both respond by listening and recording the next collection of sounds. However, the bar for deciding when to ship that audio off to Google, or when it's confident enough it can handle processing on-device, could easily change depending on whether the device is battery-powered or whether it's on wifi/eth instead of mobile. A wall-powered device might opt to keep a running history in ram of the last N seconds of audio, so it has more context with which to answer questions if Google Assistant is addressed. If it's battery powered, there are obvious reasons not to do that unless the phone has a dedicated extremely low powered continuous recording loop circuit.
harshreality|6 years ago
Wifi/ethernet and AC-connected devices change the risk/benefit calculation significantly.
Alexa or Google Assistant on a phone is therefore not really the same thing as Alexa or Google on a standalone plug-in device.
For example, a google phone (depending on model/setup) and Google mini might both listening all the time for "Hey google". Both respond by listening and recording the next collection of sounds. However, the bar for deciding when to ship that audio off to Google, or when it's confident enough it can handle processing on-device, could easily change depending on whether the device is battery-powered or whether it's on wifi/eth instead of mobile. A wall-powered device might opt to keep a running history in ram of the last N seconds of audio, so it has more context with which to answer questions if Google Assistant is addressed. If it's battery powered, there are obvious reasons not to do that unless the phone has a dedicated extremely low powered continuous recording loop circuit.