[Aurornis]

Doing 100 different matches updated frequently is an entirely different problem than matching a single wake word that isn’t changing.

Regardless, this would require so much coordination, network traffic, and on-device code that could be reverse engineered that you’re implying that nobody has every found a hint of it existing and no employees of these companies have ever leaked any hints of it existing.

It’s very much in the domain of conspiracy theories.

[kurthr]

Well, actually when you're hash based doing 100 different matches is the easy part. I'm not sure you know how steep FAR/FRR curves are for >99%/95% singe word accuracy, but having seen wake word development it's easily 100x harder than 95%/90% accuracy and none of the heavy calculation other than voice compression needs to be done locally or in a short time period. The network traffic is literally a few hundred hashes downloaded and hundreds of bits of hash matches a day (~1kB).

Even in the article there are multiple reports of it that are dismissed, and even though reverse engineering larger apps on iPhone/Android is certainly possible, with obfuscation searching for yet another hash table matching or simple voice compression is also quite difficult. Where are all the other articles reporting on the reverse engineering the very screencap apps this article talked about? Are they also just more well documented conspiracy theories?

Frankly, your best argument is that nobody is selling this as a product. So maybe there are easier more effective methods, but not because it can't or hasn't been done (since it literally has and it's been reported). It's kinda the opposite of a conspiracy theory. You have to assume that everyone capable with a vested interest won't do it, or that all of them will be caught, or that making money with ads becomes unpopular.