No, I can't prove that it's disabled, but that doesn't matter much. There are people out there who probably could and would be more than happy to publish their results if they did.

More importantly, the difference is in intent. I don't intend to carry around a device that's always listening to me. Anyone with an Alexa device is intentionally inviting Amazon to listen to every word spoken in (part of) their home.

Right but you just mentioned siri, which is included on every iphone. People do carry that around and don't expect it to be listening.

It is always listening. A coworker has Siri enabled and it regularly interrupts meetings because it thought some random noise was a wake word. It then proceeds to do whatever Siri does, which I assume involves sending whatever it hears after that point back to Apple.

I carry around and iPhone where I've done my best to completely disable Siri so I expect it not to be listening. That's antithetical to the use-case of Alexa and similar devices.

But the intent isn't there for Amazon to listen to everything you say - which is why hotword detection is done locally on Alexa and only then is an audio stream sent to their servers.

I have a coworker who has Siri enabled on his phone. It regularly wakes up and starts recording seemingly at random. Maybe "always listening" isn't the correct phrasing. "It might be listening at any time" might be better.

Sure, but the intent is there to not do that.

> ... the intent is there to not do that.

For now. Or so we're told.

Unless a court order (or bribed employee) decides otherwise. ;)