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You decide to call a store that sells some hiking boots you\u2019re thinking of buying. As you dial in, the computer of an artificial intelligence company hired by the store is activated. It retrieves its analysis of the speaking style you used when you phoned other companies the software firm services. The computer has concluded you are \u201cfriendly and talkative.\u201d Using predictive routing, it connects you to a customer service agent who company research has identified as being especially good at getting friendly and talkative customers to buy more expensive versions of the goods they\u2019re considering.<\/p>\n
This hypothetical situation may sound as if it\u2019s from some distant future. But automated voice-guided marketing activities like this\u00a0are happening all the time<\/a>.<\/p>\n If you hear \u201cThis call is being recorded for training and quality control,\u201d it isn\u2019t just the customer service representative they\u2019re monitoring.<\/p>\n It can be you, too.<\/p>\n When conducting research for my forthcoming book, \u201cThe Voice Catchers: How Marketers Listen In to Exploit Your Feelings, Your Privacy, and Your Wallet<\/a>,\u201d I went through over 1,000 trade magazine and news articles on the companies connected to various forms of voice profiling. I examined hundreds of pages of U.S. and EU laws applying to biometric surveillance. I analyzed dozens of patents. And because so much about this industry is evolving, I spoke to 43 people who are working to shape it.<\/p>\n It soon became clear to me that we\u2019re in the early stages of a voice-profiling revolution that companies see as integral to the future of marketing.<\/p>\n Thanks to the public\u2019s embrace of smart speakers, intelligent car displays and voice-responsive phones \u2013 along with the rise of voice intelligence in call centers \u2013 marketers say they are on the verge of being able to use AI-assisted vocal analysis technology to achieve unprecedented insights into shoppers\u2019 identities and inclinations. In doing so, they believe they\u2019ll be able to circumvent the errors and fraud associated with traditional targeted advertising.<\/p>\n Not only can people be profiled by their speech patterns, but they can also be assessed by the sound of their voices \u2013 which,\u00a0according to some researchers<\/a>, is unique and can reveal their feelings, personalities and even their physical characteristics.<\/p>\n Top marketing executives I interviewed said that they expect their customer interactions to include voice profiling within a decade or so.<\/p>\n Part of what attracts them to this new technology is a belief that the current digital system of creating unique customer profiles \u2013 and then targeting them with personalized messages, offers and ads \u2013\u00a0has major drawbacks<\/a>.<\/p>\n A simmering worry among internet advertisers,\u00a0one that burst into the open during the 2010s<\/a>, is that customer data often isn\u2019t up to date, profiles may be based on multiple users of a device, names can be confused and people lie.<\/p>\n Advertisers are also uneasy about\u00a0ad blocking<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0click fraud<\/a>, which happens when a site or app uses bots or low-paid workers to click on ads placed there so that the advertisers have to pay up.<\/p>\n These are all barriers to understanding individual shoppers.<\/p>\n Voice analysis, on the other hand, is seen as a solution that makes it nearly impossible for people to hide their feelings or evade their identities.<\/p>\n Most of the activity in voice profiling is happening in customer support centers, which are largely out of the public eye.<\/p>\n But there are also\u00a0hundreds of millions<\/a>\u00a0of Amazon Echoes, Google Nests and other smart speakers out there. Smartphones also contain such technology.<\/p>\n All are listening and capturing people\u2019s individual voices. They respond to your requests. But the assistants are also tied to advanced machine learning and deep neural network programs\u00a0that analyze what you say and how you say it<\/a><\/p>\n Call centers can use AI-assisted voice technology to determine whether to upsell certain customers. Ralf Hiemisch via Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n Amazon and Google \u2013 the leading purveyors of smart speakers outside China \u2013 appear to be doing little voice analysis on those devices beyond recognizing and responding to individual owners. Perhaps they fear that pushing the technology too far will, at this point, lead to bad publicity.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, the user agreements of Amazon and Google \u2013 as well as Pandora, Bank of America and other companies that people access routinely via phone apps \u2013 give them the right to use their digital assistants\u00a0to understand you by the way you sound<\/a>. Amazon\u2019s most public application of voice profiling so far is its Halo wristband,\u00a0which claims to know the emotions you\u2019re conveying<\/a>\u00a0when you talk to relatives, friends and employers.<\/p>\n The company assures customers it doesn\u2019t use Halo data for its own purposes<\/a>. But it\u2019s clearly a proof of concept \u2013 and a nod toward the future.<\/p>\n The patents from these tech companies offer a vision of what\u2019s coming.<\/p>\n In one Amazon patent<\/a>, a device with the Alexa assistant picks up a woman\u2019s speech irregularities that imply a cold through using \u201can analysis of pitch, pulse, voicing, jittering, and\/or harmonicity of a user\u2019s voice, as determined from processing the voice data.\u201d From that conclusion, Alexa asks if the woman wants a recipe for chicken soup. When she says no, it offers to sell her cough drops with one-hour delivery.<\/p>\n An Amazon patent depicts a device picking up a woman\u2019s cough \u2013 and then asking if she wants a recipe for chicken soup. Google Patents<\/p><\/div>\n Another Amazon patent<\/a>\u00a0suggests an app to help a store salesperson decipher a shopper\u2019s voice to plumb unconscious reactions to products. The contention is that how people sound allegedly does a better job indicating what people like than their words.<\/p>\n And one of Google\u2019s proprietary inventions<\/a>\u00a0involves tracking family members in real time using special microphones placed throughout a home. Based on the pitch of voice signatures, Google circuitry infers gender and age information \u2013 for example, one adult male and one female child \u2013 and tags them as separate individuals.<\/p>\n The company\u2019s patent asserts that over time the system\u2019s \u201chousehold policy manager\u201d will be able to compare life patterns, such as when and how long family members eat meals, how long the children watch television, and when electronic game devices are working \u2013 and then have the system suggest better eating schedules for the kids, or offer to control their TV viewing and game playing.<\/p>\n In the West, the road to this advertising future starts with firms encouraging users to give them permission to gather voice data. Firms gain customers\u2019 permission by enticing them to buy inexpensive voice technologies.<\/p>\n When tech companies have further developed voice analysis software \u2013 and people have become increasingly reliant on voice devices \u2013 I expect the companies to begin widespread profiling and marketing based on voice data. Hewing to the letter if not the spirit of whatever privacy laws exist, the companies will, I expect, forge ahead into their new incarnations, even if most of their users joined before this new business model existed.<\/p>\n This classic bait and switch marked the rise of both Google and Facebook<\/a>. Only when the numbers of people flocking to these sites became large enough to attract high-paying advertisers did their business models solidify around selling ads personalized to what Google and Facebook knew about their users.<\/p>\n By then,\u00a0the sites had become such important parts of their users\u2019 daily activities that people felt they couldn\u2019t leave<\/a>, despite their concerns about data collection and analysis that they didn\u2019t understand and couldn\u2019t control.<\/p>\n This strategy is already starting to play out as tens of millions of consumers\u00a0buy Amazon Echoes at giveaway prices<\/a>.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the catch: It\u2019s not clear how accurate voice profiling is, especially when it comes to emotions.<\/p>\n It is true,\u00a0according to Carnegie Mellon voice recognition scholar Rita Singh<\/a>, that the activity of your vocal nerves is connected to your emotional state. However, Singh told me that she worries that with the easy availability of machine-learning packages, people with limited skills will be tempted to run shoddy analyses of people\u2019s voices, leading to conclusions that are as dubious as the methods.<\/p>\n She also argues that inferences that link physiology to emotions and forms of stress may be culturally biased and prone to error. That concern hasn\u2019t deterred marketers, who typically use voice profiling to draw conclusions about individuals\u2019 emotions, attitudes and personalities.<\/p>\n While some of these advances\u00a0promise to make life easier<\/a>, it\u2019s not difficult to see how voice technology can be abused and exploited. What if voice profiling tells a prospective employer that you\u2019re a bad risk for a job that you covet or desperately need? What if it tells a bank that you\u2019re a bad risk for a loan? What if a restaurant decides it won\u2019t take your reservation because you sound low class, or too demanding?<\/p>\n Consider, too, the discrimination that can take place\u00a0if voice profilers follow some scientists\u2019 claims<\/a>\u00a0that it is possible to use an individual\u2019s vocalizations to tell the person\u2019s height, weight, race, gender and health.<\/p>\n People are already subjected to different offers and opportunities based on the personal information companies have collected. Voice profiling adds an especially insidious means of labeling. Today, some states such as Illinois and Texas\u00a0require companies to ask for permission<\/a>\u00a0before conducting analysis of vocal, facial or other biometric features.<\/p>\n But other states expect people to be aware of the information that\u2019s collected about them from the privacy policies or terms of service \u2013\u00a0which means they rarely will<\/a>. And the federal government hasn\u2019t enacted a sweeping marketing surveillance law.<\/p>\n With the looming widespread adoption of voice analysis technology, it\u2019s important for government leaders to adopt policies and regulations that protect the personal information revealed by the sound of a person\u2019s voice.<\/p>\nFlaws in targeted advertising<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Building out the infrastructure<\/h4>\n
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Patents point to the future<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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Seductive surveillance<\/strong><\/h4>\n
The dark side of voice profiling<\/strong><\/h4>\n