• elscallr@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Want an honest answer?

      Onboard are >=2 bits of code. At least one of those is a specific system trained to recognize a “wake word”. This specific system (ostensibly) doesn’t send anything to an outside party. Its entire job is to recognize one wake phrase: Alexa, Ok Google, or Siri, and then if that wake phrase is used it responds and tells the second system to listen. As you can imagine, this is a pretty easy job to get right 80% of the time. So that can be put on a chip. So then it does its job, and it’s the second system that sends everything to an internet service for whatever reason.

      • milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I’d love to have this properly audited sometime. I’d slap like to think that we’re generally protected from big companies doing unethical and unjust things to us, by law, … but nah

        (That’s not to say I don’t believe this explanation; the second half of my comment was just an addendum.)

        • lseif@sopuli.xyz
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          1 year ago

          why is this downvoted? you cant prove its not, if its proprietry. and since the companies listening just happen to profit off data collection (and break/bend the law often), its safe to assume they do this.

    • Joe@lemmy.knocknet.net
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      1 year ago

      There are actually 2 processors in the devices. 1 that constantly listens for a keyword, Al la, Alexa, Hey Google. When it hears it it quickly spins up another “computer” that then sends your voice back and forth to the servers for processing and response. It’s part of the reason that the listen word isn’t easily customized.

      • filcuk@lemmy.zip
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        1 year ago

        It still stores the name triggers, even incorrect matches (last I checked, which was years back).
        The recordings can be played back from account history.
        The one time I looked at some random, it was mostly snippets of my conversations with friends.
        Creepy.