Invasion of the Killer Ads?

[hmp10]

Something weird happened this morning. We asked "Hey, Lucid" to navigate to Captiva Island in Florida. It gave us a list of everything in Florida with "Captiva" in it -- except Captiva Island. So I instead asked Siri on my iPhone to navigate there. Not much better. So I canceled Siri, looked up a restaurant on Captiva, and put that address into the Lucid nav system.

The car began navigating to the desired address, and my partner, who is learning Danish, started telling me about some odd usage quirks in Danish. We were also listening to Spotify in the background. Suddenly, the car audio muted and we began getting an audio ad through the sound system. I was so confused that it took me a second to realize a female voice was delivering an ad. The ad finished, we looked at each other in stunned silence for a few seconds, and my partner resumed his complaints about Danish. About a mile later he was again interrupted by an audio ad coming through the car's audio, this time in a man's voice. I bellowed "Cancel", and the ad stopped. This did not recur during the rest of the trip. As far as I know, Siri was not open and this seemed to be coming from the car.

What the hell was going on? Was it "Hey, Lucid"? What it the iPhone? Was it Spotify (for which I have a premium account)?

Although this was so confusing that I can't correlate the ad contents to anything that was being said by either of us in the car, it seemed to be triggered by monitoring our in-car conversation. We had a thread recently on this forum about Ford's application for a software patent that just did such a thing -- and it infuriated everyone.

Has some outfit actually done this?

If there's anything that would make me dump a car, it's having to put up with this invasive crap while driving.

 

[NoseyReporter]

By chance was it a podcast?

 

[hmp10]

By chance was it a podcast?

Nope. We were listening to music by Gipsy Kings on Spotify (a pretty mediocre band that had been referenced in a movie we watched last night and that we wanted to check out).

There is a very dark side to this interconnected world we're developing and to advertising's quietly spreading like a cancer into every nook and crevice of our lives.

 

[HC_79]

Nope. We were listening to music by Gipsy Kings on Spotify (a pretty mediocre band that had been referenced in a movie we watched last night and that we wanted to check out).

There is a very dark side to this interconnected world we're developing and to advertising's quietly spreading like a cancer into every nook and crevice of our lives.

Been going on for years. Software tracks your clicks, moves etc. voice assistants listen to everything in order to market products to you.

The biggest con is how companies say “we care about privacy” it’s basically “we won’t sell your data but we’re certainly going to use it to our own benefit”. Data is king in this day and age which is why you see many companies reluctant to give Apple, Amazon, Google etc. the keys to the kingdom and try and go it along on things.

 

[joec]

Been going on for years. Software tracks your clicks, moves etc. voice assistants listen to everything in order to market products to you.

The biggest con is how companies say “we care about privacy” it’s basically “we won’t sell your data but we’re certainly going to use it to our own benefit”. Data is king in this day and age which is why you see many companies reluctant to give Apple, Amazon, Google etc. the keys to the kingdom and try and go it along on things.

Well, that's sort of the paranoid view of it.

Much more likely it was Lucid Assistant picking up on some of the Dutch words, thinking you had said "Hey Lucid" and then interpreting whatever was said after as a question and answering it the best it knew how.

Never attribute to malice that which can be far more easily explained by incompetence.

Very likely a glitch, in other words. Easily solved by turning off "Hey Lucid" and just using the steering wheel button.

 

[xponents]

Well, that's sort of the paranoid view of it.

Much more likely it was Lucid Assistant picking up on some of the Dutch words, thinking you had said "Hey Lucid" and then interpreting whatever was said after as a question and answering it the best it knew how.

Never attribute to malice that which can be far more easily explained by incompetence.

Very likely a glitch, in other words. Easily solved by turning off "Hey Lucid" and just using the steering wheel button.

But why would it respond in a female voice at first and then change to a male voice, if it was truly “Hey Lucid?”

 

[borski]

But why would it respond in a female voice at first and then change to a male voice, if it was truly “Hey Lucid?”

Because LLMs are unpredictable, and maybe it was playing some podcast or stream.

 

[hmp10]

Much more likely it was Lucid Assistant picking up on some of the Dutch words, thinking you had said "Hey Lucid" and then interpreting whatever was said after as a question and answering it the best it knew how.

Because LLMs are unpredictable, and maybe it was playing some podcast or stream.

No actual Danish words were spoken. My partner was explaining that Danish adjectives change based on what the modified noun is (person, object, etc.) and the number of the things being referred to. (It may seem like an odd conversation, but he's a philologist from Poland who, besides English, also speaks Russian and German and finds such things interesting.)

They were ads. I can't say for sure they weren't ads within a podcast or a stream but, if so, both times we just happened to land on ads instead of the primary programming.

 

[levsha]

Been going on for years. Software tracks your clicks, moves etc. voice assistants listen to everything in order to market products to you.

The biggest con is how companies say “we care about privacy” it’s basically “we won’t sell your data but we’re certainly going to use it to our own benefit”. Data is king in this day and age which is why you see many companies reluctant to give Apple, Amazon, Google etc. the keys to the kingdom and try and go it along on things.

Big Five might be not even the worse overall. Yes they can collect a lot of information, but they are also always on focus, so have to behave within some borders.
Car manufacturers actually jumped over all of them, and now routinely have full unconditional control over your car. Google can't unlock my locked phone remotely, but a car manufacturer can unlock the door (because someone who pretended to be me called them and asked them do to so etc).
And what I find the worse is that many find this absolutely reasonable. Nobody challenges "do they need to have full unconditional access to my car all the time?". No, this kind of access is not required to implement OTA update. It does not have to be all the time access to collect diagnostics data. And no, it is not the only option to implement controlling your car from your phone.

 

[tonybot]

Big Five might be not even the worse overall. Yes they can collect a lot of information, but they are also always on focus, so have to behave within some borders.
Car manufacturers actually jumped over all of them, and now routinely have full unconditional control over your car. Google can't unlock my locked phone remotely, but a car manufacturer can unlock the door (because someone who pretended to be me called them and asked them do to so etc).
And what I find the worse is that many find this absolutely reasonable. Nobody challenges "do they need to have full unconditional access to my car all the time?". No, this kind of access is not required to implement OTA update. It does not have to be all the time access to collect diagnostics data. And no, it is not the only option to implement controlling your car from your phone.

Valid points. Looking at the amount of data my Lucid uploads (About 4 Gig so far this month), makes me wonder what is included in it. Does anyone know Lucid has a published list of data items they collect from the cars? Is there an opt-in or opt-out capability?

 

[borski]

Valid points. Looking at the amount of data my Lucid uploads (About 4 Gig so far this month), makes me wonder what is included in it. Does anyone know Lucid has a published list of data items they collect from the cars? Is there an opt-in or opt-out capability?

You can opt out from inside the car’s settings.

 

[tonybot]

You can opt out from inside the car’s settings.

Saw that in the connectivity settings. Thank you!

 

[jedwin]

Good to know.

Any solid sense of how Lucid uses this data?

I'm not always averse to sharing, if the software developer is making good use of it to develop new updates, see where the glitches are, get a sense of how users are interacting with and taking advantage of features, etc. Obviously not if it's to commercialize/sell our data.....but somehow I find it hard to imagine this being in play with Lucid.

 

[borski]

Good to know.

Any solid sense of how Lucid uses this data?

I'm not always averse to sharing, if the software developer is making good use of it to develop new updates, see where the glitches are, get a sense of how users are interacting with and taking advantage of features, etc. Obviously not if it's to commercialize/sell our data.....but somehow I find it hard to imagine this being in play with Lucid.

It’s the former. Lucid has not tried to commercialize or sell any data, and it would be a big big problem with me if they did, fwiw. I would not be reacting the same way I am now, lol.

 

[hmp10]

When I started this thread it was not clear what the source was of the interruption that occurred twice on October 5. No one on the forum was sure, and a friend who is a computer programmer / analyst was not able to tell based on the limited information I had. Was it the car? Was it Spotify, which was playing at low volume at the time? Was it the iPhone which was connected to the car via Bluetooth? Did we say or do something inadvertently?

After another Lucid owner had a similarly confusing experience, numerous people on the forum and at Lucid got on the case. It turns out that the new Lucid Assistant software is hypersensitive in detecting what it interprets as the "Hey, Lucid" command. When it does, it then -- and only then -- starts analyzing what is said in the car and that it interprets as a request for information or assistance.

It turns out that Lucid is not pushing ads to the car, which I initially thought was a possibility. I thought this because Ford had recently applied for a patent for just such software that would constantly monitor what is said or done in the car and then push on-topic ads to the car. I was afraid that Lucid had gotten there first. Although I know now that Lucid has not gone down that path, I remain worried that it's in the wind and that some car companies will start testing car owners' tolerance for such a practice . . . and that a public that has become inured to such intrusive advertising tactics won't push back hard enough.

When I worked at NBC some years ago, there were bets on the table around the industry about who would be the first to get by with using the f-word in broadcast media. It became a calculated pursuit on the part of many and contributed to the progressive coarsening of dialog in television. The advertising world is driven by much the same dynamic, constantly probing for how far they can push limits and get by with more and more intrusive behavior. Our phone landlines long ago succumbed to robocalls and cold calling. Cable television, which once touted replacing ads with monthly fees to free you from the constant commercial interruptions of broadcast television, is now a world of stiff monthly fees and commercial breaks as long and frequent as in broadcast media. Email is now mostly a spam venue. Our cell phones and texting are under pressure that is only partially held off by software apps such as Nomorobo, etc.

Ford was the first to put its bet on the table with its patent application to bring push-advertising to our cars. What other carmakers will follow suit? How soon? Will enough owners care enough to object?

 

[MGRMLN]

It’s the former. Lucid has not tried to commercialize or sell any data, and it would be a big big problem with me if they did, fwiw. I would not be reacting the same way I am now, lol.

Same. As a fledgling car company, I think they need usage data to improve things. But if they were to sell it, that would NOT be ok with me

 

[levsha]

It is relatively easy to run a GenAI LLM these days. It is quite difficult to train and run it right however.
I'm not so much afraid that car manufacturers like Lucid will intentionally start recording all conversations and use them for targeted ads etc - it is so risky and toxic direction that I doubt many will decide to go there.
I'm afraid however that my data will be leaked unintentionally, just by not be careful enough implementing various functions. And this happens very often unfortunately.
Sure let's train the LLM to work better. What will you use as the training data? Your users? How will you ensure that your LLM will not "remember" some personal information during training and will not say next time to someone else as "a personal relationship advice"?
Did Kia intentionally put the backdoor it all its cars? I'm sure no, they just found it convenient to implement various functions the way they've done and didn't think enough designing them properly for security point of view.

 

[borski]

It is relatively easy to run a GenAI LLM these days. It is quite difficult to train and run it right however.
I'm not so much afraid that car manufacturers like Lucid will intentionally start recording all conversations and use them for targeted ads etc - it is so risky and toxic direction that I doubt many will decide to go there.
I'm afraid however that my data will be leaked unintentionally, just by not be careful enough implementing various functions. And this happens very often unfortunately.
Sure let's train the LLM to work better. What will you use as the training data? Your users? How will you ensure that your LLM will not "remember" some personal information during training and will not say next time to someone else as "a personal relationship advice"?
Did Kia intentionally put the backdoor it all its cars? I'm sure no, they just found it convenient to implement various functions the way they've done and didn't think enough designing them properly for security point of view.

Yes, security concerns are always a major concern for any manufacturer, and you’re right - nobody intentionally builds vulnerable software. (“Nobody” in the sense I mean, please nobody get pedantic lol)

Of course that doesn’t mean that they should stop building features; but yeah, thinking about security is, of course, important.

 

[Ughwhy]

Nope. We were listening to music by Gipsy Kings on Spotify (a pretty mediocre band that had been referenced in a movie we watched last night and that we wanted to check out).

There is a very dark side to this interconnected world we're developing and to advertising's quietly spreading like a cancer into every nook and crevice of our lives.

The Gipsy Kings are not mediocre!! Ohh that hurts!

 

[kapix]

It’s the former. Lucid has not tried to commercialize or sell any data, and it would be a big big problem with me if they did, fwiw. I would not be reacting the same way I am now, lol.

I can’t imagine a more effective way to destroy a young, premium car brand than to push ads into their luxury, six figure automobile.