> My Echo, that I use solely to voice activating lights and switches, is now an ad machine

I've been wondering if it is even possible for a publicly-traded company to deliver a voice assistant product without these incentives involved. I have to imagine the UX of these devices would be much different if they were built by a private company without the same market pressures. It would need to be self-contained and local, so that the infrastructure burden (e.g., data and AI in the cloud) wouldn't create a need for subscription service or data collection revenue to cover the cost.