Comment by nivertech

1 year ago

Many mobile apps use an adtech SDK which does on-device audio keyword spotting. The company making this SDK is super secretive, so not much information about it.

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nivertech

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simonw  1 year ago

If "many mobile apps" use it surely some docs or other details have leaked out somewhere? Or at least a name?

  • nivertech  1 year ago

    I won't disclose names.

    But thinking from the first principles, do you really think that all this phonetic keyword spotting[1] IP developed for defense tech in the late 90s and early 2000s was abandoned once recording entire phone conversations and doing full speech to text on them became technologically possible?

    I still remember lots of startups who did this stuff openly a decade ago, before Cambridge Analytica scandal[2]. After that it became impossible to get funding or get acquired, so the few that stayed in this field became very secretive.

    —-

    [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyword_spotting

    [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_A...

    • rgovostes  1 year ago

      You know users have to authorize apps to use the microphone right? That pretty much limits the theoretical exposure to VoIP, camera, and translation apps.

      On iPhone, activating the microphone causes an icon to appear, which the app can’t hide. I think if the app is in the background, it turns the whole status bar bright red.

      Secondly, there is power use attribution and it would be very obvious if an app were keeping the device awake and the microphone on based on battery drain and runtime accounting.

      So you are asking us to accept on faith a shadowy ad SDK that is both widely used but also cannot be named, one that somehow subverts multiple layers of the system security architecture? Ok. We believe you.

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