It's relatively straightforward on a smartphone to monitor the battery and bandwidth consumption that active listening and device<>server communications are occurring.
Of course - then, the next apologist will always say: "the devices only transmit when hearing the 'Wake Word'"...
Yeah, I don't think it takes an elite programmer to store/buffer audio, until the device hears the 'Wake Word', and then sends a "slightly" larger payload... (or batches several payloads)
The next level of enthusiast evangelist will then tell us that it is impossible for these devices to buffer/store that much audio data, because they have limited memory...
Yet, the same devices when used to play audio streams from the internet obviously have some sort of storage capacity to handle network glitches.
Spoken audio (which is probably recorded at standard telephone/cellphone sampling rates - after all, why train on audio that is significantly different than the audio coming from mobile phone devices) does not take up a dramatic amount of storage space.
I think that may have been true in the past but I would not at all be surprised if modern smartphones can record 24/7 with negligible effect on battery life, and upload the audio while being charged.
Of course - then, the next apologist will always say: "the devices only transmit when hearing the 'Wake Word'"...
Yeah, I don't think it takes an elite programmer to store/buffer audio, until the device hears the 'Wake Word', and then sends a "slightly" larger payload... (or batches several payloads)
The next level of enthusiast evangelist will then tell us that it is impossible for these devices to buffer/store that much audio data, because they have limited memory...
Yet, the same devices when used to play audio streams from the internet obviously have some sort of storage capacity to handle network glitches.
Spoken audio (which is probably recorded at standard telephone/cellphone sampling rates - after all, why train on audio that is significantly different than the audio coming from mobile phone devices) does not take up a dramatic amount of storage space.