Did you talk to the gadget today? There's a good chance there is, with the number of voice smart speakers and AI tasks skyrocketing as manufacturers and developers try to cash in on the popularity of voice assistants like Alexa. When you can control your gadgets, call up your favorite music, check the weather forecast and more with just a few words, why not?
But when it comes to the news, especially in a media landscape where fears of 'canard' disinformation are on the rise – and with Facebook's fact-checking processes falling into disrepute – there is an ongoing discussion about what impact the growth in the use of voice interfaces will have on news access.
While Siri was arguably the first known voice assistant - and served as the inspiration for Spike Jonze's Oscar-winning movie of hers - Siri's successors, Alexa and Google Assistant, have proven far more popular and capable of delivering news to our team.
In October, we saw BBC News launch the Alexa News Service in an effort to engage with listeners through the popular voice assistant, with dedicated reporting and leverage information from the BBC and other editorial channels. (If you want to try it, just ask Alex, “Gimme the BBC.”)
To get our heads around how voice search is changing the way news is available and shared, and the possible implications, we turned to a number of figures working at the heart of digital news production and distribution.
The BBC is jumping on board with smart assistants like Alexa, but what does that mean for reporting?
Makes the most of voice search
We spoke with Mukul Devichand, Executive Editor of BBC Voice+AI, about the reasons for the dedicated British broadcaster Alex News Service, and what it meant for news distribution in the future.
“Our journey has just begun,” Devichand said, calling the current Alexa service “the first iteration” of a much larger map. “It's pretty clear to me as a longtime producer and editor that путь the tales we are told need to be revised with every big shift in the internet.
“The rise of AI assistants has the potential to significantly disrupt how we get information. Experts offer an obvious and easy way to ask questions that can be very tricky. What could be easier than just saying-tell me what's going on" or "Is the UK leaving the EU going to happen yet" or "Arsenal win the game" or "I don't really understand why there is a war in Syria, as assistant? So we can do it instead of just listening to our phones.”
The convenience of voice commands is fueling the demand for smart home equipment like Google Home.
With smart speakers becoming fixtures in millions of homes around the world, it's critical that news broadcasters navigate the new environment, just as they have adapted to scrolling through news feeds and the generation used to getting on-demand updates via Twitter, Facebook and Google News on their smartphones. rather than from scheduled TV bulletins, the BBC and other major broadcasters around the world have built their reputation on.
Devichand also acknowledges the change and challenges that come with new methods of accessing information, suggesting that people today have “an expectation of 24/7 currency, and a sincere desire for interaction and demand depth – with much confusion and mistrust given the way news manipulated online.”
Why distrust? “When algorithms or AI direct us to chunks of content, the dangers of misinformation, gossip and a polarized society are very real and present,” he explains.
The danger of self-management
Fake news isn't a big deal these days, whether it's outright lies, being thoughtlessly retweeted or the media twisting facts for the sake of a good story that readers will click on from Facebook is laid-back attitude to inform political advertising proving highly controversial in the run-up to the next election.
The danger with voice search specifically is that, given short and digestible snippets, Alexa and other smart assistants tend to provide users with an incomplete or oversimplified picture of the current day's events, and perhaps only seeing one side of the story.
Compass News was a news aggregation app for iOS and Android.
We spoke with Matilde Giglio, venture capital investor firm Perks Hambro and founder of Compass News, a news aggregation service that was founded with the goal of breaking news readers out of the echo chamber. Giglio sees voice search as a natural way to access news, even if she tends to take information from her original context.
“Voice is seen properly by publishers as a great opportunity to reach demographics that don't always tune into the news,” says Giglio. “The boom podcast shows how people love audio. Young people deliberately refuse the main sources, and they love, according to the demand of nature, a voice that fits into their daily routine.
“But publishers fear they're losing control of their content when it's repackaged or curated to satisfy a voice on demand, as with Alexa. The content is also being separated from the publisher's own platform, and their brand is in danger of becoming diluted.”
Voice commands in action via SkyQ.
Giglio believes there is scope for voice assistant developers to gain the trust of publishers, and BBC News's Alexa service could be the start of a healthier relationship between news sources and content companies.
Devichand BBC Voice + AI Mukul certainly thinks so, arguing that serving is a way for channel users to trust the platform's news, rather than giving them more freedom to lay off coverage sections:
“There have been some remarks since we launched the service saying it could perpetuate echo chambers by giving people more control, but it's actually the other way around here - once they ask - Give me BBC News - they stay in the Air Force experience that strives to be impartial and broad, and that's the difference.”
Convenience at any cost
As much as we value the convenience of a voice interface, or the immediacy of content being sent to us through various Internet channels, the ease with which we can transmit and receive information is the biggest barrier to quality assurance, or elementary fact-checking what we hear and read.
Devichand talks about the appeal of “talk-eye,” and some broadcasters and outlets may be taking steps in the right direction by gaining control of their editorial presence. However, if we are more interested in the convenience of talking to MA than being accurate, this can make it increasingly difficult to receive the truth in our homes.
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