Can you meaningfully consent in eight seconds? Identifying Ethical Issues with Verbal Consent for Voice Assistants

TL;DR

This paper examines the challenges and ethical issues of obtaining verbal consent in voice assistants, highlighting potential risks and proposing future research directions for improving consent processes.

Contribution

It identifies key ethical concerns with current verbal consent methods and outlines open research questions to develop more effective consent mechanisms for voice interfaces.

Findings

Verbal consent can undermine informed decision-making.

Current implementations lack clarity and user understanding.

Open questions for future research are outlined.

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. This provocation paper highlights key issues with current verbal consent implementations, outlines directions for potential solutions, and presents five open questions to the research community. In so doing, we hope to help shape the development of usable and effective verbal consent for voice assistants and similar conversational user interfaces.