We Talk, They Listen

Introduction

Imagine for a moment you log onto a new website and the first thing to pop up is a cookies banner, you automatically click yes per usual and move on with your searches. With the click of a button, you gave the “okay” for the company to do more than you even know. Technically speaking, you consented, but did you consent for the companies to actively collect your data by listening in on your life?

Though many inventions, specifically the Siri feature on iPhones as well as the Alexa feature on Amazon Echo, did not exist up until 2011 they quickly gained popularity in their efficiency and usefulness. By simply saying “Hey, Siri…” or “Alexa…” you could be told a joke, set a timer, or have a question answered. These devices constantly listen for their audio cues, await the user, and respond as commanded. Similarly, the Amazon Ring doorbell which was founded in 2012 has quickly grown popular in exchange for an old fashion doorbell that simply makes a noise^[i]. Each of these devices programmed with algorithms to be attentive to our needs, makes us a question: do our devices listen to us? Do they remember more about our daily lives than we do?

Old expressions said “if the service is free, you are not the customer, you are the product” but after all, users pay for these services. Estimates believe that over 1 billion people use iPhones worldwide^[ii], that there are 40 million Alexa users in the U.S. alone^[iii], and that in 2020 Ring sold nearly 1.4 million doorbells. Yet a “majority, 69%, said they are ‘very concerned’ about their privacy when using devices such as smartphones, smart speakers, etc.”^[iv]

With such an extensive presence and hold on the global community, these devices have access to our lives more than ever. They pose credible threats to data privacy and leave consumers feeling confused, concerned, and hopeless^[v]that these companies will not have access to our every move. This coming at a time of intense innovation in the 21^stcentury makes it incredibly difficult for policymakers to take action as tech companies and the private sector has surpassed government agencies in both the realms of tech and knowledge.^[vi] This has begun to increasingly be of concern to many people as with more innovation comes less privacy.^[vii] And with more innovation comes more exploitation of consumer data. Users and the data they provide are of utmost importance to these companies, so how much privacy are they willing to give to users? Are they willing to give any?

Background

As of October 2021, Apple’s voice assistant Siri was 10 years old and since its release date, Siri continually becomes more refined as the years pass.^[viii] Originally developed and released as an app in 2010, the invention of Siri had no relation to Apple until they recognized the potential Siri had to enhance technology specifically their own. This app was a development inspired by the work of the SRI International Artificial Intelligence Center as well as one of the US Defense’s Advanced Research Projects, both of which were attempts to use AI to create a cognitive assistant. Three weeks after the release of the Siri app, the creators received a call from Steve Jobs wanting to meet with them the next day. Within 2 months, Apple acquired Siri for more than $200 million, and from that day on in April 2010, the future of voice assistance was in the hands of Apple.^[ix]

Released also in the year of 2011, Amazon’s Echo equipped with the voice assistant Alexa expanded the capabilities and elements of voice interactions with users.^[x] As developed directly through Amazon, the “fundamental difference was that it had no screen for users to interact with” making it essential that the “built-in Alexa virtual assistant would need to be very responsive and conversational” almost like “talking to a human being”.^[xi] The Echo was crafted through what some call a “wizard” that helped to curate responses for users, who were then surveyed based on their experience.^[xii] These responses from users helped Amazon collect information about what consumers were looking for and what made users’ experiences exciting. Though its sole purpose was not to play music, this feature was able to make it stand out from the crowd and it now accounts for roughly 25% of the wireless-speaker market.

What has truly made Alexa and Siri flourish is their ability to interact with the personal, at-home lives of their consumers and assist them in making menial tasks even easier. Alexa has allowed users for more tasks than ever imagined because other “independent developers are writing apps that work with the speaker’s voice controls”.^[xiii]. Similarly, as described by the Huffington Post, “Siri offered the first mass-market assistant capable of understanding humans’ natural speech patterns and assembling information from disparate parts of the internet into a single, correct response”. And as they continue to develop, they evolve to no longer just answer a question but to go further in conversation and do things for humans as an actual assistant might do.

In addition to Amazon Echo, the company has embarked on a new aspect of smart-home tech and assistance through the Ring doorbell that they purchased for more than $1 billion in 2018. Creator, Jamie Siminoff who still stands as the CEO of Ring today, invented the product in 2012 then known as “Doorbot” and hit the jackpot one might say when he presented the doorbell on the popular TV show Shark Tank in May of 2013^[xiv]. As of 2021, Ring sold seven different types of doorbells and has continued this expansion into the smart-home market diving once again a step closer to the intimate lives of all users.

Despite how large of a share and role both Apple and Amazon play in the market, the smart technology and audio-visual assistance industry see continuous growth outside of these players constantly. Evaluated in 2020, the expected compound annual growth rate of the market is expected to be 28.5%, ^[xv] which is promising when one considers the continuous growth the market has seen since its true take-off in 2011. However, with so much innovation and growth in both competition and technology, it becomes increasingly harder to regulate and control.

Be it that each of these devices provides efficiency and excitement to our lives, they pose threats to our data and privacy. In particular, the way that they actively listen to us and in a sense record our lives. It is most intriguing how at times when we are not even interacting with them how they pick up the things that we say and do in our lives. It raises concern that Apple and Amazon then have access to analyze these conversations to improve their technology, yet they still hold these conversations and listen to them. Because of human nature and our desire for instant gratification and efficiency in all that we do, it is common for many people to not read thoroughly through what they are agreeing to, which is entirely understandable. The message that many companies generate in a basic sense is “Do you accept our cookies?”. By not clicking agree at times you are putting yourself at more of a disadvantage because the platforms can deny you access, which for time being may be a large obstruction from your work. But once you click “Accept”, you grant them access to lord even knows what.

The Issue

Companies involved in the usage and creation of audiovisual assistance have been questioned by users so they may further understand the implications of how companies use their data. In various instances, companies have been caught listening to and recording us even without our engagement.

In particular, the iPhone and Echo provide more of a threat to data privacy in terms of how the devices listen to you because they wait on audio cues, but the Ring doorbell camera still collects users’ data just in other ways.^[xvi] The companies then send this data back to the software to essentially revise itself, also known as machine learning, or when a device collects and uses data to continually improve itself. This constant collection and use of data raises concern, especially because humans help teach the software

At Amazon employees sign a nondisclosure agreement barring them from sharing any of the information and knowledge they collect when listening to users’ conversations. However, they still listen and chat in internal chat rooms with others working with the data. They “take the security and privacy of our (their) customers’ personal information seriously’, but are there instances where reports of what they hear should be made?”^[xvii] Workers reported that “sometimes they hear recordings they find upsetting, or possibly criminal, two of the workers said they picked up what they believe was a sexual assault”^[xviii] but did nothing with that information only shared it with coworkers to relieve the stress of it.

Though these are questions of importance as well, it seems more crucial to dissect the consumer end of Alexa and how its recordings are being used by Amazon. While Amazon does hold private conversations with its users, there have been various instances where the government has called on Amazon to release the recordings to be used in a court of law. In 2015, in Bentonville, Arkansas a man was murdered overnight at a friend’s house where an Alexa was present, in which the authorities requested the recordings for the case.^[xix] Although Amazon refused to release the recordings to the government, they were ultimately forced to give them up.

In a similar case in Hallandale Beach, Florida the police used a search warrant to obtain recordings from Alexa to use in a murder case. At that time Amazon released a statement declaring that “unless mandated by a ‘legally valid and binding order’” they would not hand over customer information. To say that this same view will be upheld in the future is a large assumption because change is the only constant. Nevertheless, users still hold the ability to delete each day’s recordings as they please plus who knows what the device collects anyways.

Siri too awaits user interaction, but Apple records these conversations once again using them for internal improvements but also keeping the recordings for a prolonged period. “Apple does not completely anonymize your data, leaving things in like location to keep it for 6 months and then an additional 2 years once it is stripped of any personal identifiers.”^[xx] Due to a whistleblower in 2019, Apple issued an apology to its customers about employees snooping on private Siri conversations, which poses more concern as to what this data is being used for and how much control users have over this if any.

Though “the likelihood of every conversation you have being transmitted and transcribed in full and then analyzed by an actual person is low, there are plenty of ways for algorithms and artificial intelligence to ‘listen’ to you”^[xxi]according to Forbes Magazine. Unknown to users it is assumed that other sites and apps have “hundreds or thousands of their triggers used to store data points when you say what you like and where you go”, which is what we believe to be our phone listening to us all the time. This makes it only increasingly more difficult to understand what role Apple plays in data privacy as they are just the platform for various apps and other services that collect our data which may be out of Apple's control.

Amazon Ring poses no different threat to data privacy as video recordings are even more highly sought out by the government. They collect data based on how many people ring the bell, how long the bell is wrung, and if there is any motion detected all of which give insights to the company based on people’s social life and their usage of the device. A question however about the camera data that they collect can be raised, but according to Amazon the video is only held for those who have a subscription for up to 30 days, and for those without a subscription they do not keep any recordings.

Less known to the public, there are Ring databases that provide documentation of the exact location of the devices including the exact latitude and longitude coordinates to identify users’ locations.^[xxii] Though this is not an immediate data privacy threat, it still poses an ethical concern as to Amazon having access to each Ring’s exact location as this data could be tapped and is simply a safety concern. Moreover, Amazon sends this data to other companies to help them analyze it, making it even harder to protect Ring users. There continues to be speculation about the product and what Amazon has access to/uses. But as far as consumers are aware, Amazon only manually “identifies vehicles and people in videos captured by the company’s doorbell cameras, an effort to better train the software to do the work itself.”^[xxiii] The entire truth to this statement is unknown as Amazon still holds the power over its users and does not disclose everything.

In 2022, it is unknown whether people waive their rights for the companies to listen in on them when they are not engaging with the devices which is what poses the ultimate threat and worry for many. Has the consumer approved the moment it buys the device or do devices invade privacy by listening 24/7? In terms of disclosure, sources cited in 2017 that it did not seem like a legal obligation of the companies to disclose how users’ data and recordings were being used. One said, “it’s pretty much the Wild West, I can’t think of any legal requirements that would [force them to disclose what they are recording]”^[xxiv]. This obligation though not felt by companies is felt by the government in that they feel they should have access to this data to use in the courts to help protect people.

With the onboarding of new technologies every year, there are challenges posed by old laws that governed a world of privacy and protection. Each of these devices holds what seems to be our lives and holds the potential to grow to even larger extents of power in the future. In 2020, the Director of Public Prosecutions in the UK discussed how Alexa could potentially be the star witness in court cases in the future.^[xxv] He believes that these devices have begun to play an instrumental role in the way authorities go about court cases and will continue to do so. In some way or another, governments need to be able to keep up with the world of innovation to stand a chance of protecting not only their people but themselves. 

Conclusion

As of 2022, our phones go with us everywhere and have quite a hold on our lives and when they are not attached to us at the hip, other devices are listening in on our lives and being active with our every movement. With the invention of Siri and Alexa, Apple, and Amazon’s voice assistants, in 2010 the technology world as we knew it has changed immensely.

Unfortunately, humans have become the product for many of these companies as our data is an essential part of their innovation, development, and improvement. It is hard to say where this will go in the future, but for the current time in 2022, our devices seem to know more about us than we think they do. They listen in on conversations, pick up on our tendencies, and create suggestions that are almost too fitting to our lives. The challenge then raised in the world of artificial intelligence is how much data are people willing to give away. How knowledgeable are people about the way their data is collected? Will our devices know us better than any other human ever will?

Though humans are evolving with AI, it is hard to dictate the ethics of its usage when not all people stand on the same page, and no one truly knows the value of their data. Is it invaluable or priceless? As of 2022, our data is treasured by companies, and for some that are an issue but for others, it is just a part of the world we live in and are unable to escape from.

My Opinion

Nonetheless, many users of these devices will continue, as will I, to go about my life using my iPhone and other devices that provide efficiency and efficacy to my life. Conversely, I am not currently an Amazon Alexa user and I do not foresee this changing anytime in the future. I am personally not comfortable with a device actively listening to me with the ability to perform additional tasks. I will, however, be more careful about those apps when I grant access to my data and location, and information. I will be careful to only allow required cookies and try to understand what I click “Yes” to.

It is scary to see how well my devices know me more than I know myself, which is why I will take said precautions as I try to protect my data. Companies like Apple and Amazon have surpassed innovations over the years and continue to do so by using consumer data to reimagine how artificial intelligence plays a continual role in our lives.