You need to know that your smart assistant isn’t a spy

THE humble speaker is becoming less humble by the year, evolving quickly from wireless connectivity like Bluetooth or near-field communications to “smart agents” ranging from Amazon’s Alexa to Apple’s Siri.

Last year this new category became a market segment in its own right, with six million smart speakers sold, says IHS Markit. By 2020, annual sales are expected to be 59 million, and not only because of increasing functionality.

“We will see prices drop extremely fast on early products,” said the firm’s principal analyst, Paul Gray, speaking in Lisbon last week at the IFA Global Press Conference, which previews Europe’s largest consumer electronics show, IFA, in Berlin in September.

“Alexa has snatched the lead due to perfect timing of the market, but competition will intensify . . . Google Assistant is the next one that will accelerate rapidly.”

With Microsoft’s Cortana and Samsung’s Bixby also in the mix, most of the big guns of software and cloud services are showing their hands. More competition means more motivation to push the boundaries and persuade manufacturers of anything from cars to connected fridges to pick one form of smart agent over another.

But this was not only about controlling platforms for the sake of those platforms, said Gray. “It’s about the power of the network, and the device allows you to access the network. The power of the network, in turn, reinforces the device. You can see the strategic reason Google wants to get into this. The more people talk to Google Assistant, the more it improves recognition of accents and minority languages, for example. Players that are early in this will have better-trained neural networks, which means they will outperform the others.”

If that strategy sounded familiar, said Gray, it’s because that was precisely how Google came to dominate search.

But, as if to further mirror the evolution of Google’s perception in the market, smart agents are earning a level of distrust from users, who fear for their privacy. Generally, such products are launched without much effort to gain trust. Gray illustrated this by asking Siri: “Can I trust you?” The response: “Who, me?”

While in keeping with the witty responses Apple has built into the system, the response also indicated the extent to which trust is almost trivialised. To make his point, Gray used a “company needs” equivalent of Maslow’s needs hierarchy. The bottom of the pyramid, physiological needs, is replaced by the requirement that “product doesn’t hurt customers”. The pinnacle, selfactualisation, is replaced by privacy. Yet, because most companies ignore it, consumers begin to see it as the very first need. Smart agents are always listening, and are usually connected — dream devices for both hackers and marketers.

“If consumers perceive that privacy is right down there with not being electrocuted, that’s an issue. Companies have to be extremely mindful of privacy. . . If their product is seen as intrusive or spying, then it’s seen as a dangerous product.”

By the same token, if it helps protect privacy, a smart agent becomes integrated into the consumer’s self-actualisation. Are the developers smart enough to understand that?

Goldstuck is the founder of World Wide Worx and editor-inchief of Gadget.co.za. Follow him on Twitter @art2gee and on YouTube