Or thought it heard Alexa. There were many many times when my devices recognized Hey Siri and Okay Google during regular conversation when no such thing was said. I've disabled that capability on all my devices as well.

The main thing I'm taking away from this is that, if I ever find myself getting murdered, I'll just keep shouting "Alexa" as a last ditch attempt at getting justice from beyond the grave. Can't hurt.

I was thinking about this -- I'm too afraid to try it, but if I said, "Alexa call 911", does that functionality exist?

Is there a skill I can install that would let me say something like, "Alexa start recording audio to the cloud"?

"Alexa call 911" doesn't work (at least currently) and it looks like it's against Amazon's rules to try and create a skill that calls emergency services: https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-sk...

At least in our office it happens quite commonly that Alexa will trigger on phrases that aren't the word "Alexa" and are even unrelated to it.

Is there some technical evidence that this is the case? Or is there a chance that these can be configured remotely to record everything with the right permissions without the owner knowing?

This definitely has the potential to be the "killer's name written in blood" of the 21st century.

What if someone else said "Alexa"? What if someone on TV or the radio said "Alexa"?