"ALEXA, ARE you recording everything you hear?" It is a question more people are asking, though Amazon's voice assistant denies the charges. "I only record and send audio back to the Amazon cloud when you say the wake word," she insists, before referring questioners to Amazon's privacy policy. Apple's voice assistant, Siri, gives a similar answer. But as smart speakers from Amazon, Apple, Google and other technology giants proliferate (global sales more than doubled last year, to 86.2m) concerns that they might be digitally snooping have become more widespread. And now that these devices are acquiring other senses beyond hearing—the latest models have cameras, and future ones may use "lidar" sensors to see shapes and detect human gestures (see Science & technology section)—the scope for infringing privacy is increasing. So how worried should you be that your speaker is spying on you?
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