Invasion of the Killer Ads?

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.

By chance was it a podcast?

NoseyReporter said:

By chance was it a podcast?

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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.

hmp10 said:

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.

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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.

HC_79 said:

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.

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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.

joec said:

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.

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

xponents said:

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

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

joec said:

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.

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borski said:

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

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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.

HC_79 said:

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.

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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.

levsha said:

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.

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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?

tonybot said:

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?

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

borski said:

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

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Saw that in the connectivity settings. Thank you!