Smart speakers are designed to listen for a wake word constantly, which understandably raises privacy questions worth addressing directly.

How It Actually Works

Most smart speakers process audio locally to detect only the wake word, and only begin recording and sending audio to the cloud after that word is recognized. Recordings are typically stored in your account’s activity history, viewable and deletable at any time.

Taking Back Control

Every major platform lets you review and delete stored voice recordings, and most offer a setting to auto-delete them after a set period like three months. The physical mute button on these devices fully disables the microphone at a hardware level for genuine peace of mind.

Reviewing your voice history settings once and enabling auto-delete addresses most reasonable privacy concerns.