you gotta be out of your mind to bug your own house with these devices
That being said, I do unplug my Google Home Minis when they're not in use.
- company surreptitiously builds a profile on everything it hears, ostensibly for "training" their ML / AI
- data is viewed by snoopers within the company
- data on public figures is leaked to media / public
- data is sold to other companies you do business with
- data is used to build a "social credit" profile. Say something casuallu offensive? Forget getting that loan!
- data is accidentally leaked. Organized theft rings now know your routine, and the routines of everyone in your city all at once.
Then there are the odd stories of people who are expecting a baby suddenly getting ads for parenting supplies, or gift surprises being spoiled by recommendations, etc.
At the end of the day, FAANG are not my friends. They don't get to know things about me for free, and rarely are the goods they offer worth what they get in exchange.
I make some exceptions, but voice assistants aren't one of them.
I have yet to see any evidence that any voice-command device is transmitting everything it hears. The data sent by the device is too small to contain audio beyond what was said after the wake word was detected. The hardware does not have the necessary chips to do 24x7 voice to text.
You're totally right that they can do a lot with what they do get, from the audio around when you say the wake word, and from other data that you give them through web surfing, location data, etc., and that's totally a legitimate reason to not have one or to limit one's interaction.
The worst part is, when we tell it to stop (potentially flagging it as incorrect), how do we know that conversation isn't being analyzed to "improve" the model? We never used the wake word, so we don't know how long it was listening.
It's hard for me to think of them as anything other than creepy. I want to like them; I like the idea of being able to have the convenience of vocal interactions with technology. But, until I'm convinced that it is entirely on my own terms, that's not going to happen.