Is Google or the government spying on me and listening in?

I don’t know the full answer to that question but when it comes to the “always listening” feature in some of the newest phones and wearables, consumers can rest assured the answer is NO. The batteries would be worn down WAY too fast if it was sending all the audio spoken out to the clouds for analysis. The “always listening” approach only works at low power when the technology is “deeply embedded” in the smaller processors within the system. That’s right, even the bigger DSP’s in the phone are too power hungry to obtain the lowest power.