I don't think that the ability to record and transcribe people's words will encourage manufacturers to remove Wi-Fi functionality. If anything, that would encourage them to keep it. Imagine the marketing possibilities.
sure but once the capability is there it's not unlikely we'll see regulatory pressure from regions like the EU or certain US states to ban or heavily limit sale of "collect all your data" wifi enabled devices.
IMHO the only reason there's not been pushback from the EU already is because so much assistive tech is only possible with wireless connectivity currently. Once privacy conscious assistive tech is viable those crackdowns will probably be on the horizon even if only for the security risk associated with millions of internet connected devices with poor security posture.
