Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Date: April 3, 2018 at 7:00:23 AM EDT
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?
> Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
>
> Hey, Alexa, What Can You Hear? And What Will You Do With It?
> By SAPNA MAHESHWARI
> Mar 31 2018
> <https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/31/business/media/amazon-google-privacy-digital-assistants.html>
>
> Amazon ran a commercial on this year’s Super Bowl that pretended its digital assistant Alexa had temporarily lost her 
> voice. It featured celebrities like Rebel Wilson, Cardi B and even the company’s chief executive, Jeff Bezos.
>
> While the ad riffed on what Alexa can say to users, the more intriguing question may be what she and other digital 
> assistants can hear — especially as more people bring smart speakers into their homes.
>
> Amazon and Google, the leading sellers of such devices, say the assistants record and process audio only after users 
> trigger them by pushing a button or uttering a phrase like “Hey, Alexa” or “O.K., Google.” But each company has filed 
> patent applications, many of them still under consideration, that outline an array of possibilities for how devices 
> like these could monitor more of what users say and do. That information could then be used to identify a person’s 
> desires or interests, which could be mined for ads and product recommendations.
>
> In one set of patent applications, Amazon describes how a “voice sniffer algorithm”could be used on an array of 
> devices, like tablets and e-book readers, to analyze audio almost in real time when it hears words like “love,” 
> bought” or “dislike.” A diagram included with the application illustrated how a phone call between two friends could 
> result in one receiving an offer for the San Diego Zoo and the other seeing an ad for a Wine of the Month Club 
> membership.
>
> Some patent applications from Google, which also owns the smart home product maker Nest Labs, describe how audio and 
> visual signals could be used in the context of elaborate smart home setups.
>
> One application details how audio monitoring could help detect that a child is engaging in “mischief” at home by 
> first using speech patterns and pitch to identify a child’s presence, one filing said. A device could then try to 
> sense movement while listening for whispers or silence, and even program a smart speaker to “provide a verbal 
> warning.”
>
> A separate application regarding personalizing content for people while respecting their privacy noted that voices 
> could be used to determine a speaker’s mood using the “volume of the user’s voice, detected breathing rate, crying 
> and so forth,” and medical condition “based on detected coughing, sneezing and so forth.”
>
> The same application outlines how a device could “recognize a T-shirt on a floor of the user’s closet” bearing Will 
> Smith’s face and combine that with a browser history that shows searches for Mr. Smith “to provide a movie 
> recommendation that displays, ‘You seem to like Will Smith. His new movie is playing in a theater near you.’”
>
> In a statement, Amazon said the company took “privacy seriously” and did “not use customers’ voice recordings for 
> targeted advertising.” Amazon said that it filed “a number of forward-looking patent applications that explore the 
> full possibilities of new technology,” and that they “take multiple years to receive and do not necessarily reflect 
> current developments to products and services.”
>
> Google said it did not “use raw audio to extrapolate moods, medical conditions or demographic information.” The 
> company added, “All devices that come with the Google Assistant, including Google Home, are designed with user 
> privacy in mind.”
>
> Tech companies apply for a dizzying number of patents every year, many of which are never used and are years from 
> even being possible.
>
> Still, Jamie Court, the president of Consumer Watchdog, a nonprofit advocacy group in Santa Monica, Calif., which 
> published a study of some of the patent applications in December, said, “When you read parts of the applications, 
> it’s really clear that this is spyware and a surveillance system meant to serve you up to advertisers.”
>
> [snip]
>
> Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: http://dewaynenet.wordpress.com/feed/
> Twitter: https://twitter.com/wa8dzp



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