Conspiracy theorists of the world, rip off that tinfoil hat and take a bow: you were (kinda) right. Despite the fact pretty much everyone has a story involving chatting about something only to see an ad for that something pop up on a device, the idea that your phone actively listens to you has long been dismissed as silly. After all, brands don’t need to eavesdrop like that – they already have access to millions of data points that build up a detailed picture of your habits and predicted purchases.
But just because brands don’t need to listen to your conversations, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t companies figuring out creepy new ways to mine your data. 404 Media, a tech-focused news site, recently got hold of a pitch deck from Cox Media Group (CMG), touting its “Active Listening” software, which targets adverts based on what people say near their device microphones. The presentation doesn’t specify whether this voice data comes from smart TVs, smart speakers, or smartphones but the slide where it extols “the power of voice (and our devices’ microphones)” has a picture of people looking at their phones.
I’m not going to make the predictable Black Mirror reference because CMG already has. When 404 Media reported on Active Listening last year, CMG’s website had the following (now deleted) blurb: “What would it mean … if you could target potential clients who are actively discussing their need for your services in their day-to-day conversations? No, it’s not a Black Mirror episode – it’s Voice Data.”
It’s hard to know how widespread the use of this service is, but CMG’s deck lists Facebook, Google and Amazon among its partners – though this doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve partnered on this particular technology. Amazon, for its part, has said it has never worked with CMG, and Google removed CMG from its Partners Program after the 404 report. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, said it is investigating whether CMG has violated its terms of service. While a lot of details remain murky, what’s clear is this: privacy died a long time ago. Nothing is off-limits for some advertisers – there have even been experiments with “targeted dream incubation” in an attempt to brand your dreams. The future is a meticulously personalised, highly targeted nightmare.
Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist