[Someone1234]

> And not to be anywhere near anyone else's listening devices.

No assistant records all the time, not Google, Amazon, or Apple. They listen for the "Wake Word" onboard using more primitive (and lower power consumption) Speech Recognition and only utilize The Cloud after the "Wake Word" (or phase) is spoken. You can confirm this using Wireshark.

You can view and listen to your recorded speech on the Google Account Dashboard.

[alias_neo]

No, they don't, however, accidental activation is still highly likely.

I've had other people's devices activate during conversations where I couldn't figure out which part of the sentence activated them, it just happens.

"Ok, Go get..." "Ok, Good ..." "All except..." "Sir, I..."

Then you have television shows and adverts that intentionally use language to activate these assistants.

Usually the assistants are going to say something when it accidentally detects a wake word, but if you're in another room or don't hear it for some reason, it can easily capture a conversation without you knowing.

[freehunter]

I use the phrase “are you serious?!” a lot when I am frustrated. Almost always it wakes up Siri on at least one of my iDevices. Which makes me say “are you serious?!” again and it just spirals from there.