Every since Captain Kirk uttered “Computer” and the USS Enterprise's onboard AI woke ready to do his bidding, tech giants have been striving to develop practical voice-activated assistants to replace the keyboard. In the last couple of years the technology has come on leaps and bounds and interactions with other internet-enabled devices, enabling us to order groceries, dim the lights or find out the latest football scores with a couple of spoken words have emerged.
It's no surprise then that the world's biggest personal technology providers are vying for our voice commands to steer business their way. But people have raised concerns that devices in the house that are ‘always listening' could be spying on them. News stories such as Samsung warning customers about discussing personal information in front of its smart television and Arkansas police demanding that Amazon release recordings from an Echo device that was present at the scene of a murder have helped stir misconceptions about how much our devices are listening in.
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