All Ears: Always-On Listening Devices Could Soon Be Everywhere

Add in the latest smart wireless headphones--Apple's expected next-generation AirPods or competing ones from Bose or Shure--along with talking microwave ovens and TVs from Samsung, LG and others, and anyone at home or in an open-plan office could soon be within earshot of hundreds of microphones. Most of them will be listening for a wake word like "Alexa," "Hey Siri," or "OK Google," just as our phones and smart assistants do now. The roadmaps of tech giants and startups alike show how sound is poised to become the first ubiquitous connection between users and the artificial-intelligence hive mind the internet is becoming. Driving this change are massive volumes of components, originally designed for smartphones and other mobile devices, that have dropped in price and grown in functionality over the past decade. For a hundred years, microphones consisted of a relatively large membrane whose vibrations were converted to electrical impulses.