There’s new evidence that backs up what most people already knew: your phone does listen to you.
404 Media reports that a marketing company that works with Facebook and Google has quietly admitted that it listens to people on their phones using microphones and then shows ads based on what it hears.
The television and radio news company Cox Media Group (CMG) also told investors in a pitch deck that its “Active Listening” software makes use of AI to “capture real-time meaning data by listening to our talks,” according to the story.
“Advertisers can use this speaking data along with behavioral data to target people who are already in the market,” the company said in its pitch deck.
Consumers “leave a data trail based on their chats and online behavior,” according to the deck from CMG. The AI-powered software looks at this “behavioral and voice data from 470+ sources.”
According to the presentation, Amazon, Facebook, and Google are clients of CMG’s “Active Listening” service.
Also, Google took CMG off of its “Partners Program” page after 404 Media asked the company to speak on the situation.
A Google spokesperson told the New York Post, “All advertisers must follow all relevant rules and regulations as well as our Google Ads policies. When we find ads or advertisers that break these policies, we will take the necessary action.”
Meta, which is the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, said it would look into CMG to see if it broke any of its rules.
They said, “Meta does not use your cell’s microphone for ads, and we’ve been clear about this for years.”
“We are contacting CMG to make it clear that their scheme is not built on Meta data.”
But an Amazon representative told 404 Media that the company’s ads “have never worked with CMG on this program and have no plans to do so.”
Besides that, the business said it would punish any partner who broke its rules.
404 Media reports that this comes after MindSift, a company based in New Hampshire, said it used voice data to place focused ads by listening to people’s daily talks through microphones on their devices.
Author: Steven Sinclaire
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