TOBY SHAPSHAK: Big Brother can hear all you say
Voice assistants usher in a new way of interacting with a computer, but there are huge privacy concerns
The war for voice assistants is hotting up. Amazon’s Alexa is the current champion; it stole a march on everyone else when its speaker unit was installed as an extension of the e-commerce giant’s sales strategy. In January, Amazon opened up Alexa to third-party manufacturers. The company revealed a host of new "skills" for Alexa. It is being included in more devices, including Huawei smartphones, Logitech devices for cars and Lenovo speakers. Car manufacturers (including Ford, Volkswagen, and Volvo) have announced integration plans. Voice assistants will grow by 130% this year, giving Amazon 70% of this new category of voice-enabled speakers, according to researchers eMarketer. About 35.6m Americans will use such an assistant this year, a 128.9% increase over last year. Voice assistants, which generally send a small voice clip back to the servers for the heavy-duty processing, are the most visible interface that uses artificial intelligence (AI). They will get smarter and more usefu...
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