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I think amazon solved this partly with hardcoding "alexa" as the wake up word. Meaning a specialized program monitors for "alexa" and ignores everything else and does not record.

Smart TVs might work similar, but I surely won't have anything like it in my home anyway.

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That would be reassuring if there was literally any way to verify this.

Partly yes, but the microphone is still on, you have no access to the code so how can you determine that a malicious actor isn't listening in?

You won't know that with any other microphone either. Also any loud speaker to be precise (they can be used as microphones).

But like I said, I don't want to have those devices either and my smartphone has a removable battery ..

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