Hexagon DSP Always Listening?

Privacy Questions
1

This sounds bad when written out.

Essentially according to someone on Twitter, the Qualcomm Hexagon DSP chip is set to always be on for voice recognition. No permissions can turn it off, so it’s listening to your conversations 24/7.

Here’s the short mention: https://nitter.net/ReimuNotMoe/status/1595357904143798272#m

Not exactly quality discussion, but I can’t find anything about it online. Yes there’s talk about security risks from Qualcomm chips but not this, which makes me wonder if it’s worth worrying about esp. as someone with a pretty low threat model.

2

It’s a processor core, inside the System on Chip (SoC). It’s just Qualcomm’s version of the Digital Signal Processor (DSP).

It’s a bit like saying “my CPU executed the malware I just loaded.” Is my CPU bad? The DSP doesn’t specifically “listen” to you.

3

Then what does it do, then ?