The Spy Inside Your Car

Digital assistants may be a convenience for drivers, but they also raise serious privacy questions over the information they collect.

- Jaclyn Trop

TECH INCHING DOWN THE FREEWAY, a driver realizes she’s forgotten TECH her weekend plans and asks her digital copilot to check her calendar. Within seconds, a voice emanates from the car’s speakers telling the driver that she has RSVP’d to a friend’s birthday party and then suggesting a gift—a Detroit Lions jersey.

The entire process ends less than two minutes after the driver asks the digital assistant to order the jersey. Meanwhile, the dialogue inside the car is sent to a distant data center, ready to be mined for ads pitching an NFL game, even though the driver dislikes football.

Once clunky and buggy, voice-recognition technology is improving and quickly spreading to the dashboard, allowing drivers to issue a wider range of commands using natural speech. Designed to keep drivers’ eyes on the road, “personal assistants” powered by artificial intelligence can perform a variety of functions, from managing calendars to placing Amazon Prime orders.

When synced with smart-home gadgets, the software can also turn up the thermostat, turn off the lights, and lock the doors from miles away. But if the benefits of bringing Amazon Alexa, Apple’s Siri, or Google Assistant into the car seem endless, so do concerns about privacy and how the information collected will be used.

“Consumers have good reasons to be concerned about the use of voice-recognition systems in cars,” says Christine Bannan, an attorney for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a consumer advocacy group in Washington, D.C. “There is a false narrative that because consumers embrace new technology, that means they are indifferent about privacy.”