FTC Fines Cox Media Group $800K Over Alleged 'Active Listening' AI Ad Service That Used Phones Without Consent

CMG employees allegedly told clients that voice data accounted for 40%-50% of the behaviour volumes they consumed (Credit: Vitaly Gariev/Unsplash)

For years, millions of people have sworn that their phones secretly listen to their conversations and serve targeted ads. Cox Media Group took that widely held fear and turned it into a product, marketing an 'Active Listening' service that claimed to use artificial intelligence to detect conversations from smart devices. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has now confirmed that the service never collected a single piece of voice data.

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