The Grammar of Privacy
Google and other online companies know a great deal about those of us who use their search engine, email, maps, calendar, news, travel sites, and other services. They know where we live, what we buy, where we travel, which subjects interest us, and much, much more.
Voice recognition systems will know even more.
“Voice allows us to tap into far more detailed analytics than text,” said Sam Vasisht, chief marketing officer for MindMeld, which builds natural language systems for consumer websites. “The way we speak can reveal if we are happy, sad, or angry, and whether we’re just looking or interested in buying. It can show our gender and age, and our economic and educational status.”
Voice systems will analyze this data to understand us better, so they can have more meaningful dialogues with us, said Werner Goertz, research director for personal technologies at global IT consultant Gartner. They will also use it to target advertisements at us.
“The big driver for voice recognition is its commercial use,” Goertz said. “The more they understand our preferences, behavior, and proclivity to make buying decisions, the better they can predict ways to maximize the value of the ads they show us.”
A world of always-on virtual agents might feel even more intrusive, Dan Roberts, CEO of Scout Alarm, which makes Alexa-connected home automation systems, said. Alexa, he notes, is always on, but right now, it listens only for the keywords in commands and ignores everything else.
“When we talk about Alexa becoming more proactive, it will be listening for more than those keywords,” Roberts said. “This will bring privacy issues to the fore. When we install any device that is always on and connected to the cloud, it raises privacy concerns for some consumers. Not everyone is going to want to stream a picture of their home.”