I was gifted an Alexa, I set up a few routines to announce the time and temp and occasionally I use it for Pandora. I leave the microphone disabled unless I momentarily want to give it a command.
Based on take aparts done by other people I'm reasonably confident it is really disabled.
This is great, having every app, unsorted by default, on the homescreen/desktop was one of the most annoying things to me about iOS. I have a regular habit of running General->Reset->Reset Home Screen Layout to get an alphabetical list.
Auto creating homescreen icons is one of the first things I turn off when first setting up an android device.