Speak Up! Legal Challenges in the Light of the Determination of Emotion in Conducting Targeted Advertising through a Voice Recognition Device

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology keeps on being developed and has started to emerge into some devices and/or machines. AI can be embedded in many forms, and one of them is voice recognition technology. This technology that offered a human-like interactive feature has featured such as in iPhone Siri and Amazon Alexa. The rising trend of this technology also showed when Amazon has been granted a new patent regarding its virtual assistant, Alexa, in 2018. According to the patent, the device will automatically infer the user’s voice to determine their emotion in order to generate targeted advertisements. This patent hence posed a risk of harming the user’s autonomy since the user is unable to leave their emotions to go undetected by the device. Therefore, the commodification of emotion could challenge the adequacy of the current legal regimes, in particular, data protection and consumer laws since both have the primary concern to protect the autonomy and dignity of consumers. This research aimed to analyse whether the current European data protection and consumer laws are adequate to mitigate the risks posed by the commodification of emotion to conduct targeted advertising in the voice recognition technology.

Corporate Governance of Sustainable Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Strategic Communication (SC) and Digital Marketing (DM): United Arab Emirates Guidelines

“…Advocating organizations seek to reach appropriate legal formulations for marketing and digital advertising content, considering the variables that have occurred and will occur in the marketing environment and advertising communication. The current study agreed with (Rachmaniar, 2019) in supporting attempts to impose legal frames for recognizing the voices and attitudes of digital consumers. At the level of influencers' rights, the current study expected in the immediate and near future that influencers will demand compensation for the use of their name, image, and simulation, this is supported by (Nuss, 2022), who emphasized the need for new legislation to regulate brand deals in influencer marketing .…”