If you think about how a smart speaker or smart display works, logic would tell you that they need to be constantly listening. After all, how can your device hear your “Alexa” or “Hey Google” command if it’s not listening? Well, you’re right. These devices are always listening, but it’s not as scary as it sounds.
Listening vs. Recording
When people hear that smart speakers are always listening, what they’re really afraid of is the possibility that the smart speaker is always recording them. That’s how humans listen, but that’s not what’s happening with smart speakers. This is an important distinction to make.
When you listen to someone talk, you are essentially making a recording of the information in your brain. You remember what the person said and you can access it later. However, if you’re not paying attention, the information doesn’t register in your brain. The person asks, “What did I just say?”, and you don’t know.
This is similar to how a smart speaker works. It’s always listening, but nothing registers until it hears the “Alexa” or “Hey Google” wake-up commands. Only then will it record and take action on what you’re saying. Without those wake-up commands, anything you say is “in one ear and out the other,” so to speak.
Another way to think of this is to imagine how a dog understands you. The dog hears everything you say, but it only understands certain phrases. Hearing is not the same as understanding, just like listening is not the same as recording.
How Does That Work?
It’s pretty cool that these devices are programmed to listen for certain words and phrases, but how does that actually work? Unsurprisingly, it’s pretty complicated and very interesting.
There are a few things at play here. It’s a combination of hardware, software, and the internet. We took an in-depth look at how Alexa listens for wake-up commands, but we’ll paraphrase a bit here.
First, these devices typically have multiple microphones inside. An Echo Dot, for example, has seven microphones. This helps the speaker hear commands from up close and far away as well as in noisy environments. All of these microphones work together to pinpoint your voice.
Every time you say a word, it’s run through algorithms to figure out whether it matches the speech pattern associated with the wake-up command. This all happens locally on your device. Only after it has passed through several layers of detection does it begin to record and send the audio to the cloud.
RELATED: How Alexa Listens for Wake Words
What Happens to These Recordings?
Hopefully, we’ve eased some of your concerns about listening, but what about recordings? That’s still a scary aspect for a lot of people, knowing that every question and command you give is recorded and stored somewhere.
RELATED: How to Delete Your Alexa Recordings by Voice
In August of 2020, Google stopped storing audio recordings by default. Users can still opt-in to having their recordings stored, but it’s purely optional. Google also has the ability to auto-delete recordings when they get old.
RELATED: How (and Why) to Opt-In to Google Recording Storage
RELATED: How to Listen to (and Delete) Every Command You’ve Ever Given to Alexa
RELATED: How to Stop Companies From Listening to Your Voice Assistant Recordings
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The truth is that you have to give up some privacy to use these virtual assistant smart devices. However, these companies have tools in place to minimize the privacy risks. You should take advantage of those tools.
The moral of the story is that these devices aren’t as scary as you might think. They aren’t always recording and uploading whatever you say—but they do keep some recordings.
