It’s been a long-held suspicion by many people: that smartphones and smart speakers are listening in on their private conversations for various reasons.
Now one company — Atlanta-based Cox Media Group — has revealed that yes, your devices are listening to you. Indeed, CMG touted its ability to identify “relevant conversations via smartphones, smart TVs and other devices” using AI to let local businesses target ads to those people.
“It’s True. Your Devices Are Listening to You,” said a page on the CMG Local Solutions site, which has since been pulled down. “With Active Listening, CMG can now use voice data to target your advertising to the EXACT people you are looking for.”
In a Nov. 28 blog post (which also has been deleted), CMG Local Solutions said its “Active Listening” technology can pick up conversations to provide local advertisers a weekly list of consumers who are in the market for a given product or service. Example it cited of what Active Listening can detect included “Do we need a bigger vehicle?”; “I feel like my lawyer is screwing me”; and “It’s time for us to get serious about buying a house.”
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According to CMG, it can customize a campaign “to listen for any keywords/targets relevant to your business.” The result, the company claimed, is “Advertising efficiency and timing taken to a new level.”
“Imagine a world where you can read minds. One where you know the second someone in your area is concerned about mold in their closet, where you have access to a list of leads who are unhappy with their current contractor, or know who is struggling to pick the perfect fine dining restaurant to propose to their discerning future fiancé,” CMG Local Solutions said in the blog post. “This is a world where no pre-purchase murmurs go unanalyzed, and the whispers of consumers become a tool for you to target, retarget, and conquer your local market.”
The blog post and related pages on CMG Local Solutions’ website have been removed but an archived version is available. News about the company’s Active Listening program was previously reported by 404 Media.
In a statement released Friday, Cox Media Group said that its businesses “do not listen to any conversations or have access to anything beyond a third-party aggregated, anonymized and fully encrypted data set that can be used for ad placement.”
According to the company, CMG Local Solutions’ access to advertising data based on voice and other data is collected by third-party platforms and devices “under the terms and conditions provided by those apps and accepted by their users.”
In the since-deleted blog post, CMG Local Solutions discusses whether Active Listening is legal. “We know what you’re thinking. Is this even legal? The short answer is: yes. It is legal for phones and devices to listen to you. When a new app download or update prompts consumers with a multi-page terms of use agreement somewhere in the fine print, Active Listening is often included,” the company said in the post.
A Google rep said in a statement to Variety, “For years, Android has prevented apps from collecting audio when they’re not being actively used, and whenever an app activates a device’s microphone, there is a prominent icon displayed in the status bar.” With Android 11 (released September 2020) and later, apps cannot access the microphone or camera while running in the background, even if users have granted apps explicit permission to do so.
According to Apple, no apps can access an iPhone or iPad’s microphone or camera without your permission. In iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 or later, when an app uses the microphone or camera, your device displays an indicator to let you know it is being used. In addition, Apple says data collected for the Siri voice assistant “is not used to build a marketing profile, and is never sold to anyone.”
Cox Media Group’s statement Friday did not specifically address why the materials about CMG Local Solutions’ Active Listening were removed from its website. The company said, “We regret any confusion and we are committed to ensuring our marketing is clear and transparent.”
On its site, CMG says its businesses include 14 TV stations in nine markets including affiliates of ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, Telemundo and MyNetworkTV; 52 radio stations in 11 markets; a news bureau in Washington, D.C.; and several streaming and digital platforms. CMG is majority owned by private-equity firm Apollo Global Management with Cox Enterprises (parent of cable operator Cox Communications) holding a minority stake in the company.
