Consent on the Fly: Developing Ethical Verbal Consent for Voice Assistants

TL;DR

This paper explores the challenges and proposes a research agenda for developing ethical, usable, and effective voice-based consent mechanisms for voice assistants, balancing convenience with informed consent principles.

Contribution

It introduces a research agenda and discusses design considerations for implementing ethical verbal consent in voice assistants, drawing on GDPR and ubicomp research.

Findings

Voice-forward consent improves usability over app-based permissions.

Verbal consent raises challenges in maintaining informed consent principles.

Proposes future research directions for ethical voice consent mechanisms.

Abstract

Determining how voice assistants should broker consent to share data with third party software has proven to be a complex problem. Devices often require users to switch to companion smartphone apps in order to navigate permissions menus for their otherwise hands-free voice assistant. More in line with smartphone app stores, Alexa now offers "voice-forward consent", allowing users to grant skills access to personal data mid-conversation using speech. While more usable and convenient than opening a companion app, asking for consent 'on the fly' can undermine several concepts core to the informed consent process. The intangible nature of voice interfaces further blurs the boundary between parts of an interaction controlled by third-party developers from the underlying platforms. We outline a research agenda towards usable and effective voice-based consent to address the problems with brokering consent verbally, including our own work drawing on the GDPR and work on consent in Ubicomp.