I too have observed no use-cases that make these devices appealing even if data exfiltration was not their principal feature. But what irks me most is the flim

I too have observed no use-cases that make these devices appealing even if data exfiltration was not their principal feature. But what irks me most is the flimsy excuse that sending their recordings (or even a post-processed textual rendering) to the cloud is necessary to perform these trivial operations. We've had desktop voice recognition of the quality necessary to perform these operations for a long time now. > "What's on sale today ?" This could access an Amazon (store) API directly. > "Find me a Chinese restaurant" This could use a Yelp API directly, as if it were a web browser. > "What's the weather" This could use a Weather Underground (or whatever) API. Ideally the device could be configured to source data for these inquiries from various options. > "play my party playlist" This shouldn't generate any off-network traffic at all.