Especially since Alexa already converts it to text! It wouldn't be outside the realms of possibility.

Would it be possible to test this? Check the battery life of the Dot in a completely silent room vs the battery life of a Dot listening to an audiobook played on repeat. If it is actually listening and transcribing it should have a higher power consumption and thus die faster - right?

For NLP research, you'd want something that preserved more information than text.

Questions for anyone in the field: how much is preserved? Is there a < audio but > text form that allows for iterative testing? Maybe the output of a first-pass pheneme decoder? If so, what kind of space requirements?