Imagine your car playing you an ad based on your destination, vehicle information—and listening to your conversations.
Ford has patented a system that, per the filing, would use several different sources of information to customize ad content to play in your car. One such information stream that this hypothetical system would use to determine what sort of ads to serve could be could be the voice commands you’ve given to the car. It could also identify your voice and recognize you and your ad preferences, and those of your passengers. Finally, it could listen to your conversations and determine if it’s better to serve you a visual ad while you’re talking, or an audio ad when there’s a lull in the conversation.
If the system described in the patent knew that you were headed to the mall on the freeway based on destination information from the nav system and vehicle speed, it could consider how many ads to serve in the time you’ll be in the car, and whether to serve them on a screen or based through the audio system. If you respond more positively to audio ads, it might serve you more of those—how does every five minutes sound?
But what if the weather’s bad, traffic is heavy, and you’re chatting away with your passenger? Ford describes the system using the external sensors to perceive traffic levels and weather, and the internal microphone to understand conversational cadence, to “regulate the number (and relevance) of ads shown” to the occupants. Using the GPS, if it knows you’ve parked near a store, it might serve you ads relevant to that retail location. Got passengers? Maybe you get an audio ad, and they get a visual one.
Given how consumers feel about advertising and in-car privacy, it is difficult to imagine an implementation of this system that wouldn’t generate blowback. But again, the patent isn’t describing some imminent implementation; it just protects Ford’s IP that describes a possible system. That said, with the encroachment of subscription-based features, perhaps it’s only a matter of time before you’re accepting a $20/month discount to let your new Ford play you ads on your commute.
If/when this happens it will just lead to a rise in aftermarket products to disable the feature.
Hell, since they will probably use AI to parse the audio you can probably use it to fuck with your friends. Like when people would put out hyper-specific FB ads but via cars.
And then they integrate the systems with proprietary cross checking so that you can’t swap out or disconnect components, doing so will throw a code that will prevent cars from passing inspection on the CAN bus or cause a no-start. Why? Because they’ll put that shit in the contract when you buy.
Just like the outrage over car features needing subscriptions to activate, people will bitch and complain, then they buy the car anyway.
I bet people will find a solution that's very simple, like snipping the GPS/cellular antenna. I think that could work to bypass it because what if your driving in a area with no reception? I highly doubt they will turn off your car because of were your driving.