Who knows?
By the looks of things, it appears 49/49% people who come on here either have had similar experiences, or not - confirmation bias, conspiracy theory syndrome, over-imaginative mind... choose your platitude.
At the end of the day, it is schisms of belief. Either you can believe it, or you can't - I realise that is a platitude in itself; however, I have seen enough evidence to suggest to me that it is possible for a device to link your hotwords to your targeted advertising. I remember first hearing about targeted advertising back in 2000 (or thereabouts) and thinking it was hokey cokey. The idea that your PC/Windows had the ability to look at your browsing history in order to find your patterns of behavior, in order to pre-empt your shopping habits seemed absurd to me. A few years down the line I experienced Spyware and Gamespy (which as we all know, had the side-load of cracking down on piracy), then Skype, Kazaa, Smartphones, 1 Gig HDD's...
I remember that phone (I can't remember the model) that introduced voice dialing and couldn't get my head around how it could differentiate between my Dad's voice and mine.
It seemed as though every day, there was some 'new' tech to surprise and capture the imagination. Take me back to then, and voice recognition, facial recognition, 3-D, internet dating would all have been like something out of X-Files to me.
I am no longer surprised nor mystified at anything; and maybe that is a choice... But what bothers me is that 'it' will never stop and for each person who creates something around the latest tech, who means good, there will be three other people who want to use it for greed, profit and power. This is happening and no-one will convince me otherwise, and as ridiculous as it may sound to some - it is a ridiculous to me that people can't see how this tech can and will be misused to garner a profit. As paranoid as it sounds, I like my thoughts and intentions to be mine and mine alone - if I speak to a friend about something that I want or need - I don't want some shlock half-way accross the world capitlising on being able to predict or pre-empt those wants or needs.
It is akin to cold calling for me - I hate it when I am called by PPI companies and I loathe telesales; I'm by no means obsessed or does it impede on my life; but I've attended enough informed consent, privacy and information governance training sessions to know that if there's a buck to me made from your information, there will always be someone there willing and able to buy it.