Privacy and Smart home AI-powered Voice Assistants

AI-powered voice assistants are becoming so mainstream that are now being bundled with smart home devices, allowing remote control via voice commands. Millions of people already have an AI-powered voice assistant in their homes, and some experts say consumers need to be mindful of privacy and security.

Privacy issues regarding voice listening capabilities of such devices are raising concerns, as their processing capabilities are not local, but in the cloud. They do listen to you all the time, but will send what you say to the cloud for processing only after they hear predefined activation words.

Although popular assistants send voice files in encrypted form, so privacy snoopers can’t use smart speakers to spy on your family, some people are still worried due to reports of vulnerabilities found in various products — even some that use encryption.

Some devices have sometimes misinterpreted requests as shopping orders, so you may end up with an expensive toy that you actually didn’t order. Speakers are set to ask for confirmation before placing the order, but in some cases even AI assistants may wrongly take a No as a Yes.

Watch the video above for some tips and tricks on how you can protect your privacy when you have AI-powered voice assistants “listening” around the house, and how to secure your entire smart home. For more information on how to secure your smart home, check out www.bitdefender.com/box.