VirtualAssistant

What does Virtual assistant do?

Virtual assistant is now not a new topic anymore. Most smart phones are installed with at least one virtual assistant that you can use and it becomes one of the functions of a smart phone. Virtual assistants are existed in even more places like your home and some public areas. So what does it do?

  • They will be like your personal assistant and answer most of your questions without a touch, such as weathers, navigation, use your smart device and play music.
  • They can help you arrange your daily schedule and remind you of things you need to do when you are around. Ex. alarm, to-do lists and meetings.
  • Some will even record and memorize your routines(if you have one) and remind you on time without you telling them.

What are the benefits of using a virtual assistant

It is convenient and save you quite some time when you say it and let someone do it for you. It helps you being lazy in some occasions. E.g. if you have smart furniture in your home, you can connect them to your curtain/lights/TV/thermostat, and you can ask your assistant to control those device for you, so you don’t need to walk or reach your hands. It adapts high technology and it is going to help you out in your life as it is developing. It will have more functionality in the future, now is a good time to start adapting to it.

What are the problems of using a virtual assistant

  • Because they need to listen to the “trigger” word, they need to listen to what you say all the time. They sometimes use the information you say to search for relevant results, whether you like it or not. For example, if you say stuff animals a few times, your assistants may record it and actually show you the ad of stuff animals when you use amazon.
  • They don’t require authentication, some of them use voice recognition, but not as strong as password. In this case, anyone can have the access of the information that the assistant has, like the schedule of the user. Some privacy may leak.
  • Your information may be stored in the company’s cloud service and they will have the access of your information, some of them may use your recordings to analyze the data or the functionality of the virtual assistant, some may sell your information to other companies, your privacy is not fully protected.
  • In some companies’ terms and conditions using the virtual assistant, if your information is leaked, they are not responsible for the leaked information. It is difficult when you are trying to have a lawsuit.

A few ways to improve your privacy using virtual assistants

  • They have this function to ensure that they don’t listen to it when you need some privacy. Alexa and Google Home has a mute button when you don’t want them to listen, and HomePod has none, but you can ask Siri to stop listening and confirm. *In Alexa and Google, you can delete the recordings and data in the settings of the app. For Apple, they claim that they will delete your data automatically. For analysis, they will have human to evaluate the recordings, and assigned with a random ID of the recordings and saved up to 6 months. After that, the ID will be stripped off, but the recordings will be saved up to two more years.(How To Make Your Amazon Echo and Google Home as Private as Possible , WIRED)
  • You can also opt out the service when you use the virtual assistant, so that you don’t need to worry about people will use your recordings to improve the functionality of virtual assistants.
  • Another way to improve this is to improve your account security.(also see: Password Manager) No matter how smart the virtual assistant is, if people cannot remotely access or manipulate your virtual assistants, you will stay safe from the others.
  • Last but not least, Plug off the home assistant.

For education use, we also made a Virtual Assistant Slide to help better understanding the topic.