[lukan]

I think amazon solved this partly with hardcoding "alexa" as the wake up word. Meaning a specialized program monitors for "alexa" and ignores everything else and does not record.

Smart TVs might work similar, but I surely won't have anything like it in my home anyway.

[sixothree]

That would be reassuring if there was literally any way to verify this.

[doublerabbit]

Partly yes, but the microphone is still on, you have no access to the code so how can you determine that a malicious actor isn't listening in?

[lukan]

You won't know that with any other microphone either. Also any loud speaker to be precise (they can be used as microphones).

But like I said, I don't want to have those devices either and my smartphone has a removable battery ..