Intellectual property is not a topic that is particularly entwined with smart home assistants but there are some links between the topic and the technology. One concern that has been raised has been with Google’s smart hub devices and how they answer questions. Google itself is not an informational database but rather a search tool that combs the web for relevant results and returns them to the user. However in recent years, google has been working on answer blocks that summarize information from different websites in an effort to get users the most relevant content quickly. Their smart home hubs make particular use of this feature with results for voice searches. This raises the issue of whether or not the sources of this information are having their intellectual property violated and whether or not this usage falls under quotation protection laws because it is being pulled from multiple sources and stripped of all but the relevant info to the search. [1]

Sources

  1. VEYRET, P. (2018, May 5). Google’s Answer Box and Intellectual Property: Is there a problem? Retrieved from http://blog.economie-numerique.net/2018/05/05/googles-answer-box-and-intellectual-property-is-there-a-problem/