No he's right, several apps listen in on your conversations for advertising purposes. Tons of similar stories can be found online.

The FTC just made an announcement about SilverPush, an example of such software:

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2016/03/ftc-i...

That's actually an interesting thing to test. If it's the speech recognition you think is suspicious, why not try to talk it into showing you something it didn't show you previously, without mentioning the thing via facebook and stuff?

I'd even try it myself, but I don't have a facebook account, or any devices with "personal assistant" apps for that matter. For the obvious reasons.