CES 2017: Why type when you can talk?

Amazon was the darling of this year’s Consumer Electronic Show (CES), with its intelligent personal assistant, Alexa, appearing to have established a dominant position over competitors like Apple’s Siri, Google’s Google Assistant, and Microsoft’s Cortana. These intelligent personal assistants, which are integrated into increasingly popular hardware devices such as the Amazon Echo or Google Home, are capable of responding to voice commands, providing information from the internet, playing music, and a variety of other functions. They’re also hubs for smart homes, with the capability to help manage in-home smart devices, lights, temperature control, and connected appliances. However, as intelligent personal assistants and their “skills” become more ubiquitous, privacy and online questions remain.

 
A look into the future

Alexa was a star at CES thanks to the open architecture for its machine learning artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. Amazon is coming in stronger than its competitors in the “skills” section of the Alexa app – the software is capable of interfacing with more third party devices than its competitors. This is a result of Amazon making the software available to other device manufacturers. Additionally, by being “always on” or through “white listening” of users’ commands, the Alexa software allows for the creation of easy-to-develop enterprise grade solutions for companies seeking to create compatibility between their products and the virtual assistant.

Amazon’s approach of making the Alexa software available to other device manufacturers means that a company that chooses to pair its third-party device with the Alexa platform can share tools and workflow processes with other developers across Alexa’s content management ecosystem. This has allowed Alexa to interface with many hardware devices beyond just the Amazon Echo speaker and has created a more personalized and interactive end-user experience. As a result, hardware companies like Ford, LG, Lenovo, Mattel, Wemo, and Whirlpool that have adopted the Alexa platform get instant exposure to potentially millions of users and partner companies that are also adopting the Alexa platform. Rather than creating a proprietary platform that keeps user data in a silo for the benefit of that single device’s manufacturer, Amazon and its partners can innovate together and profit at multiple points in this new “sharing economy.”

Thanks to the success of Alexa, while mobile phone users are busy enhancing the bottom-lines of Google and Apple through the use of Google search, the Android platform, and Apple’s App Store, Amazon has quickly gained a stronger foothold in the consumer game beyond an individual’s online purchase history. The more a consumer uses the Alexa platform, the more data becomes available to share with third-party vendors, who can gain yet more information on their customers to improve marketing and sales efforts. This is also a way to ensure all these third-party vendors are utilizing Amazon Web Services (AWS) as their back-end cloud service provider, a win-win-win for the company.

 
Intelligent Assistants, Privacy, and Security
Based on my experience attending this year’s CES, cross-functioning content is the next horizon for using these voice-enabled platforms, both online and off.  There is major potential for cross-platform marketing on a real-time basis. Imagine being in your voice-enabled car, asking for a location for coffee, and being offered a promotional credit from a nearby shop that is also using the same intelligent assistant platform. However, using all of this technology creates a privacy and online security dilemma, with multiple microphones constantly enabled to hear a user’s queries and commands. For these cross-over platforms to succeed, all companies creating virtual assistant technology, including the third-party manufacturers who choose to use a virtual assistant platform, must take the security of the devices and their users’ data seriously.

The devices’ connections and audio recording functions need to ensure the security of stored commands and data.  Because hacking and data breaches remain threats, voice-activated devices should have the capability of deleting all back data if the user chooses to do so. Users should also be able to change the password of any of their individual connected devices. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced last week a challenge to combat the security vulnerabilities that have already shown up in home devices.  Internet of Things (IoT) creators should take the security of their devices as seriously as our mobile and network providers.

Efficiently and effectively connecting all of these devices can enhance all of our lives, but we want life enhancing products whose benefits do not come with security threats. Product creators should pledge to consumers that their new technologies can provide all promised benefits while keeping the security risks of the end user manageable for the entire ecosystem.  Currently, one of the most prevalent cybersecurity challenges is insider threats; we want to ensure that as connected technology becomes more prevalent in our lives, the voice-activated assistant isn’t one of them.

TechPolicyDaily.com