Technology boom: a threat to consumer privacy?

Consumer Electronic Show, (CES 2017) has just ended giving us a glimpse of innovative tech and what to expect from the tech space in the calendar year. From smartphones to smart TVs to 'smart everything,’ numerous products were showcased by some of the biggies from all over the world which, not to mention, stole our attention immediately. One such tech is the AI-based voice-activated bot(s).

The idea behind these bots is simple: provide information or help people, in general, via simple commands to make things easier in the long run. To do this, the AI-powered bots will listen to your requests, collect more personal information, and predict what you want before hand. Oh, so convenient, right?

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While these bots may or may not make things easier for you, they’ll certainly need all of your data to predict things. Now, this very aspect is both good and bad. Good because it can make things convenient and bad since companies (with the help of bots) will have your personal information at disposal.

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The very thought that the companies have the potential to share the collected personal data to advertisers is downright scary, if not nightmarish! For instance, companies store information from your previous queries and create a virtual profile based on your search preferences. Once, these profiles are created, they will be shared with advertisers so that they can throw relevant ads thereby generating more revenue.

This is just a single instance of what AI and AI-powered bots are capable of. We are planning for a dedicated article on Artificial Intelligence to discuss the technology in-depth. So, keep a tab on this space.