Our phones are really listening to our conversations, marketing firm reveals

Your phone is indeed listening to your conversations, according to a new report.

404 Media has revealed that a marketing firm, which counts Facebook and Google among its marketing partners, has acknowledged that it uses smartphone microphones to listen in on users and then serves ads based on the captured information.

Cox Media Group, a major television and radio news corporation, admitted in an investor pitch deck that its “Active Listening” software employs artificial intelligence to “capture real-time intent data by listening to our conversations,” as stated in the report.

The company explained in the pitch deck, “Advertisers can pair this voice-data with behavioral data to target in-market consumers.”

The pitch deck also noted that consumers “leave a data trail based on their conversations and online behavior,” with the AI-driven software gathering and analyzing “behavioral and voice data from 470+ sources.”

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, says it is looking into if CMG violated our terms and conditions, and will take appropriate action as necessary.

“Meta does not use your phone’s microphone for ads and we’ve been public about this for years,” a Meta spokesperson told Insider Paper. “We are reaching out to CMG to get them to clarify that their program is not based on Meta data.”

After 404 Media published a report with information about the company’s documents, Google removed CMG from its affiliate program website.

An Amazon representative informed 404 Media that its advertising division “has never worked with CMG on this program and has no plans to do so,” and that the company would take action against any partner that violates its policies.

Last December, a New Hampshire-based firm named MindSift claimed it used voice data to deliver targeted ads by eavesdropping on everyday conversations through device microphones, according to 404 Media.

This report brought to light the existence of CMG’s “Active Listening” feature.

“We know what you’re thinking. Is this even legal?” the company wrote in a since-deleted blog post from November 2023. “It is legal for phones and devices to listen to you. When a new app download or update prompts consumers with a multi-page term of use agreement somewhere in the fine print, Active Listening is often included.”

Article updated to include a comment from a Meta spokesperson.