A hot potato: For almost as long as we’ve had smartphones, there has been the belief that they surreptitiously listen to our spoken conversations to serve us targeted ads; most people have experienced seeing an ad on Facebook for something they were recently talking about. It’s always been claimed that this type of privacy invasion doesn’t happen. However, a marketing agency, whose clients included Facebook and Google, has admitted to using an “Active Listening” feature that eavesdrops on conversations via phone mics to gather data.
A pitch deck from Cox Media Group (CMG), seen by 404 Media, states that the marketing firm uses its AI-powered Active Listening software to capture real-time data by listening to phone users’ conversations. The slide adds that advertising clients can pair the gathered voice data with behavioral data to target in-market consumers.
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