Android doesn't give access to always-on microphone, right?
My first impression was that an always on microphone would murder battery life. Only recording when there is sufficient noise level and batching recordings before uploading might work, though. Plus keyword extractions sounds a lot easier than full speech recognition. A sleeping app I tried before could record background noise to check for snoring and that only added a couple percent of battery usage.
Also, facebook messenger murders battery either way.