Yes, activation is local. You can see this in the documentation for making your own Alexa device. [0] To my knowledge all the cloud-based systems use something

Yes, activation is local. You can see this in the documentation for making your own Alexa device. [0] To my knowledge all the cloud-based systems use something like this for both privacy and technical reasons. Sensory includes a chart showing the CPU requirements for wake word activation and accuracy. [1] The main reason custom names aren't allowed is accuracy and training time. Even with a well-trained model like Sensory's using 90 MIPS the wakeword isn't recognized 10.2% of the time and has false acceptance. Using a set wakeword could also allow for a FPGA or custom chip to have the wakeword model hard-coded for a much lower power hit for mobile applications. One of the other wakeword solutions, Kitt-AI Snowboy [2] allows for personal hotwords, but it takes some effort to make a personal training set and this isn't nearly as robust as what Amazon can throw at it. [0] https://github.com/alexa/alexa-avs-sample-app https://github.com/alexa/alexa-avs-sample-app [1] https://github.com/Sensory/alexa-rpi https://github.com/Sensory/alexa-rpi [2] https://github.com/Kitt-AI/snowboy https://github.com/Kitt-AI/snowboy