But without hard evidence I don't believe random apps are just recording clandestinely in the background.

I certainly do. Malware attempts to record you is old news.

We have always assumed voice was off the table for practical reasons - voice recordings are expensive to decode and correlated usefully.

Cox has particularly deep pockets, which makes this interesting.

I do actually agree, this really could just have been a vendor bullshitting. Normally I would say Occam's razor points there. But Occam's razor points the other way, to me, when I consider that basically everyone I know has experienced a voice targeted ad.

The big ugly question is which apps are recording voices?

It might just be name squatting spyware. I haven't seen confirmation that any do this, and I always assumed it was too expensive. Maybe it still is, but my guess is Cox isn't the only ones who got that sale offer.

The creepy part is, if you're not inclined to take Google, Amazon, and Meta at their word, then one wonders what other apps are recording voices...

Here's the conspiracy part:

• Apps by Meta famously ask for more permissions than they should reasonably need.
• Both Google and Amazon publish operating systems that promise us they are enforcing our permission preferences, while definitely collecting more behavior data than most people would feel comfortable with, if they were aware.
• We know that all three companies thrive on tracking our behavior, and selling what they learn.
• One of the three had to change it's corporate slogan away from "don't be evil".

The conspiracy emerges when we look at these data points and squint a little.

Edit: I think many of y'all are in denial about how much you shouldn't trust Meta apps on your phones.

We know Meta wants to use things you say to build an ad profile. We have evidence they don't have any moral qualms about doing it. We know they have unfathomable terms of service and closed source apps.

And now we know there's been at least one closed door conversation about buying the recordings that supposedly don't exist.

I don't have proof but I also don't have any apps by Meta on my phone.