"They are always listening" isn't exactly unhinged. Infact it's a bit unhinged to think they can't listen through current technology when that shit literally listens to people talking in the vicinity.

"The majority of the commands we issue to smart speakers are innocuous, perhaps asking to play a particular radio station or set an alarm. But whistleblowers have expressed concern that devices are waking up randomly and processing accidental recordings that should never have been made. 

These are known as "false accepts" and data collected by one Google whistleblower shows that about 15 per cent of recordings occur by accident. This error rate indicates that smart speakers – essentially microphones in our homes – may not be as benign as we've been led to believe. "These technologies live in your home, they become part of your daily fabric," says Schaub. "When you phone a call centre, you typically get a message explaining that the call may be recorded for training purposes, but that explicit acknowledgment is missing from smart speakers."

https://www.thenationalnews.com/arts/are-big-tech-companies-actually-listening-in-on-us-via-our-phones-or-smart-speakers-1.898574

This is one source. 15% is too high even for accidental activations.

Edit: Found the most relevant article. I heard about this one maybe 6 months ago:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/new-report-claims-your-phone-tv-and-smart-speaker-are-spying-on-you-but-is-it-true/