The Ford Motor Company has officially given you a reason to stay the hell away from their cars. The automotive giant has filed a patent for a product that it claims can record the conversations you’re having inside your own vehicle so that third-parties can then serve you ads based on what you say. It’s so horrifying and so invasive that you’d be forgiven for completely and totally giving up on the brand altogether.
The patent, which was originally reported on by Motor1, refers to an “In-Vehicle Advertisement Presentation System.” That system would use recordings of conversations that transpired inside the vehicle’s cabin to inform what kind of commercials it’ll serve to the occupants. It would also be able to monitor the geographical location of the vehicle, the speed at which its traveling, and also suss out other details, like whether the car is in heavy traffic or not.
“Such systems and methods provide maximum opportunity for ad-based monetization,” the application states. “These systems and methods may use knowledge of vehicle destination prediction to provide more relevant advertisements, for example, if a user is going grocery shopping, merchandise purchasing, etc.”
It’s yet another example of a company discussing how to use personal products or household items to basically wiretap users’ conversations and then mine them for advertising opportunities. We recently wrote about a pitch dek passed around by the Cox Media Group that discussed similar technology that it claimed could mine conversations culled from smart home devices to serve ads. As I have previously noted, it seems unclear how this sort of setup does not break state-level wiretapping laws —unless a few sentences dashed off in the product’s terms of service is enough to justify this kind of eavesdropping.
In a statement shared with Gizmodo, Ford emphasized that filing a patent for a technology that would help advertisers spy on customers didn’t necessarily mean it intended to implement it: “Submitting patent applications is a normal part of any strong business as the process protects new ideas and helps us build a robust portfolio of intellectual property,” a statement from the company reads. “The ideas described within a patent application should not be viewed as an indication of our business or product plans,” it continued.
While failing to answer questions over whether such a product would amount to illegal surveillance of the customer, the company said: “No matter what the patent application outlines, we will always put the customer first in the decision-making behind the development and marketing of new products and services.”
Huh. Does transforming a car into a thoroughfare for corporate surveillance and marketing truly seem like the best way to “put the customer first”? Or does it actually seem really creepy and like a cynical way to exploit the customer for every last dollar they’re worth? Hmm. Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s the second one.