Google gets in deeper…
Date: December 5, 2013Category: Author: Danielle Azar
It has come to my knowledge that Google filed a new patent over the weekend that is particularly telling of the company’s future mindset. The patent is for a robot system that will reply and send out social media messages for you. The robot would reply to your friends and make updates to your social media pages mimicking your language and tone so the interaction would appear to be authentic. Of course, to be able to mimic your tone, Google would need access to all your social media accounts, texts, and e-mails (as if they didn’t already). The bot would also be self-learning, meaning that the more you use it, the more it gets to know what you like to say and it gets better at predicting a true post.
I say Google is going too far. Although they say the technology will only be used to automate your social media, you know that they’re also going to use it for advertising purposes. If the bot gets to know you so well that it can predict your very words, it’s obviously going to be able to predict what you want to buy. Advertisers will be able to target consumers much more effectively with this kind of information at hand.
Another issue is who would be using this. Social media is supposed to be a fun way to interact with one another. Why would we want a robot taking over an activity we enjoy? I can see businesses who do social media marketing being interested in a certain amount of automation but I don’t think the every day person would see much value in this. Maybe Google predicts that one day, we’ll all have so many social media accounts that we’ll need a service like this. They might be right since new social platforms seem to spring up everyday.
It’s looks like the future of the internet is a bunch of robots messaging each other plotting how to get us humans to buy more junk we don’t need. Oh Google, you rascal!
Leave a Reply