The problem with voice assistants

Users need to find a balance in the trade off between convenience and loss of privacy

A recent incident in Belgium highlighted the increasing privacy concerns with voice-activated robotic assistants. A contractor sent audio recordings of over 1,000 Google Assistant conversations to the public broadcaster, VRT. These contained medical information as well as personal data that allowed identification of the user. What’s more, 153 of these recordings should have never been made as the “Ok Google” command wasn’t clearly given. Google has responded with defensive PR on its official blog saying these recordings are anonymised and transcribed for experts to analyse and help make the virtual assistant smarter. 

This problem won’t go away. Google Assistant, Apple’s