Electric Cars From BYD Can Listen To Owners, How Dare They?

We are entering the age of AI and Generative AI, and the current AI model taking the world by storm is conversational by nature. This means that it is increasingly designed to be able to converse with you. In addition, AI is still primarily hosted in the cloud, which means that not only are AI-enabled devices like digital assistants like Amazon Echo, but Smartphones like the new phones from Google are always listening so they can understand the context of any command or question you might wish addressed.

So, it should come as no surprise that cutting edge EVs, which either have or will get, AI capabilities will listen to you as well. BYD, one of the Chinese car companies challenging Tesla, is a case in point, Its software can listen to your conversations largely because it needs to, just like the other devices, in order to function properly. 

So, is this problem a real concern or just another effort to slow the advancement of technology? It is likely a bit of both. Let me explain.

Coming To Grips With Being On-Stage All The Time

We are surrounded by technology that can capture virtually anything we do visually or audibly. Our Smartphones' microphones are also active at all times, and people have been concerned about what they are hearing for some time. If you have a digital assistant, it, too, is always listening so it can respond to commands or provide timely information. In this context, this has also concerned a lot of people. 

Some of the firms with these listening apps, like Google, sell information to others, which is grounds for concern. In contrast, others like Amazon might want to use what they capture to pitch new products and services (though there is no evidence that either company is misusing this information, that doesn’t mean they aren’t).

Auto companies, however, don’t seem to fully understand AI yet, and they aren’t known for capturing user data from their drivers to build better cars. I expect that even if they did, we’d likely be okay with this, given that we would like to have better cars. In other words, it probably doesn’t matter if these devices are capturing information to please you more.

A few years ago, the firm I worked for conducted a survey and found that most people were OK with data capture as long as that data wasn’t used against them. And, at least for now, the auto companies are more likely to not know what to do with the vocal information they captured. Even if they did, it would be to come up with vehicles and services that uniquely address your needs, so there would be no real exposure.

The China Problem

However, with a Chinese car maker, there are additional concerns that the Chinese government may be pulling this information from Chinese car makers and using it to manipulate foreign, and likely domestic, opinions or identify individuals they wish to act against. I’d be concerned about this if I lived in China, which aggressively monitors its citizens and has the technical competence to capture and use the information they would be receiving effectively.

But just because there is a will and a method for doing this doesn’t mean they are. I still work in the security segment, and typically, it is just easier to plant a microphone on someone (or corrupt their smartphone with malware) if you want to listen to an individual or defined group. This is because we don’t live in our cars, but we do live with our smartphones, so capturing information from a car would only result in a small subset of what you might say in a day. While compromising a phone would be far more likely to capture what you need both in and out of the car, making the Smartphone, rather than the automobile, a far better choice for monitoring.

Finally, should they get caught, the existing tariffs and sales restrictions would seem trivial to what would result, and even people in China might start to avoid Chinese cars. The economic risk is, therefore, extremely high to do this, while the benefit, compared to what could be captured from a phone or dedicated bug, is relatively low.

Wrapping Up: Looking To The Future

I worked for Disneyland early on in my life, and one of the things that came out of the Disney training was this concept of being on-stage and off-stage. When you were in costume, you were to behave as if on stage, which means you were in character and avoided anything that could reflect poorly on you or the company. Well, we are all on stage most of the time now. You only have to go to YouTube to see videos of people misbehaving. In Portland, there was a driver who lost it with his dash camera running, and that video was used to send him to prison because he was acting badly.

I expect the videos and sound that your car, phone, digital assistant, or other connected devices can and will be used against you if you misbehave, suggesting that, increasingly, we should act as if we are on-stage because we are. Instead of being worried about being monitored, think more about not doing things that would cause you future problems.

Rob Enderle is a technology analyst at Torque News who covers automotive technology and battery development. You can learn more about Rob on Wikipedia and follow his articles on Forbes, X, and LinkedIn.