The Voice Catchers
How Marketers Listen In to Exploit Your Feelings, Your Privacy, and Your Wallet
Joseph Turow
Your voice as biometric data, and how marketers are using it to manipulate you
The first in-depth examination of the voice intelligence industry, this timely book exposes how artificial intelligence is enabling personalized marketing and discrimination through voice analysis. Amazon and Google have numerous patents around voice profiling, and their smart speakers already extract and use your voice prints for identification and more. Customer service centers are treating you differently from other callers based on what they conclude your voice reveals about your emotions, sentiments, and personality, often in real time. According to scientists, your weight, height, age, race, and illnesses can also be determined from the sound of your voice. Ultimately not only marketers—but also politicians and governments—may use voice profiling to infer characteristics about you to serve their interests, not yours or society’s.
Leading communications scholar Joseph Turow places the voice intelligence industry in historical perspective and offers a clarion call for regulating this rising surveillance regime.
Joseph Turow is the Robert Lewis Shayon Professor of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication. He is the author of numerous books, most recently The Aisles Have Eyes. He lives in Bala Cynwyd, PA.
“In this well-researched call to action, Joseph Turow explains why we need to protect the human voice to shield our thoughts and emotions.”—Chris Jay Hoofnagle, Professor of Law in Residence, University of California, Berkeley
“The Voice Catchers is compelling, thoroughly researched, and filled with jaw-dropping revelations. It gives readers a fascinating peek under the hood of the companies exploiting our voices, as well as reasons to hold them accountable.”—Woodrow Hartzog, Professor of Law and Computer Science, Northeastern University
Publication Date: May 18, 2021