Uber to trial recording audio of rides - what could possibly go wrong?

News in that that Uber is to trial audio recording of rides in Brazil and Mexico in a move that could see it rolled out to other territories.

The reasoning behind the move is that it might increase driver and passenger safety and help to arbitrate in disputes or criminal acts during the journey. There is logic to this, but there are also numerous concerns with the trial:

- Privacy: concerns over your personal conversations being recorded and stored on Uber's services
- Data: the audio would be recorded on the driver's device and then passed as encrypted files to Uber -  what about the cost of the data on the driver's data plan?
- Encryption: this is a minimum but what if the recordings are hacked in a data breached and the voice recordings and voice print of the users are used for nefarious purposes
- Opting-in: what about your consent to have your voice recorded? Can you opt-out

On the face of it, it looks like a legal minefield and raises all kinds of privacy concerns even if the intention behind it is a positive one.

Pirating of The Mandalorian set to break all records

The Star Wars juggernaut is coming to a small screen (possibly not) near you with the release of The Mandalorian as part of the launch of Disney+.

Disney+ is yet another streaming service set to compete with the giants of Amazon Prime, Netflix, Apple TV+, Hulu and the rest. It's only available in a few countries at launch (Canada, Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand and USA) due to pre-licensing deals and won't reach the UK until March 2020.

The Mandalorian is the latest iteration of Star Wars since Disney acquired Lucasfilm back in 2012 for just over $4 billion. Disney are hoping that it is one of the crown jewels that will drive new subscribers to its Disney+ service as loyal fans follow the content.

With the exclusivity to Disney+ and the limited geographical distribution coupled to the popularity of the Star Wars series, it is predicted to set new records in piracy as frustrated fans seek how to download The Mandalorian any way possible.

While the streaming services have gone a long way to reducing piracy and increasing the options available to fans wanting to watch their shows legally, we are entering an era of increasing fragmentation with hit shows spread across the different platforms and fans understandably reluctant to fork out for multiple streaming services.

It does beg the question of whether a new one-streaming-service-to-rule-them-all might emerge with a higher monthly fee to access all shows. At present it's unlikely as the services compete for market share and ownership of customers. However, user experience combined with content are king. Fans want easy access to their favourite shows and even if you did have multiple accounts it's a challenge keeping up with which show is appearing where.

Internet communications of the future - fake it till you make it

Photo by andré spilborghs on Unsplash

Fake news, fake pictures, fake video, is nothing real anymore?

As artificial intelligence improves and the human-generated content can be increasingly mimicked, will there be a time when what is real and what is fake merge into one morality-free mess?

Certainly the trend is moving in that way.

Increasingly through Natural Language Processing we have entered a time where structured data can create article content at scale and while it may still lack the nuances and ambiguity of human characteristics, it is getting close. Particularly for drier, fact-based content, like aggregated news headlines, rolling sports reports and financial data.

And in the video sphere, not only can celebrities and politicians be increasingly convincingly mimicked, but also individuals can transform themselves into someone else on video chat.

Take for example the story of the Chinese vlogger, the wonderfully named Your Highness Qiao Bilou, who used a filter to portray herself as a young, glamorous woman only to be unmasked as a middle aged, slightly less glamorous version when a glitch removed the filter mid-chat. Fair play to her you may say for exploiting the shallowness of her fee-paying audience, but it only emphasises the point of not taking things at, literally, face value.

So, are the machines taking over once and for all? No, at least not for quite a while yet.

What can be automated, will be automated, but authenticity is going to become increasingly valued over utility.