Amazon Alexa / Echo

Amazon's Alexa smart speaker put an always-listening microphone in over 100 million homes, making it a cornerstone of the smart home market. Investigations revealed that Amazon employed thousands of workers to listen to and transcribe Alexa recordings, including private conversations and intimate moments. Law enforcement subpoenaed Alexa recordings in murder cases, raising unprecedented privacy concerns. The convenience of voice computing came at the price of normalising corporate surveillance, with Amazon storing 1,000 hours of audio per user on average—3x more than comparable devices from rivals like Google Home.