VIRTUAL ASSISTANTS IN THE WORKPLACE: REAL, NOT VIRTUAL PITFALLS AND PRIVACY CONCERNS

摘要

Don't ever say anything you don't want played back to you someday. This famous quote from Mafioso John Gotti is not the most likely advice that we would think to give to our clients. However, given the current environment where people and workplaces willingly, and in some cases enthusiastically, integrate technology into their everyday lives and businesses, we would be remiss if we did not counsel our clients on the impact of virtual assistants like Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri, Google's Assistant or Microsoft's Cortana, who rely on speech recognition technology to listen and record our every word. When it comes to the impact of recorded statements, Gotti may be an expert and his advice is perhaps some of the best that we can give to our clients. In some respects, these devices closely mimic wiretapping and may be used both intentionally and unintentionally to this end. In fact, the unintentional use of this technology has recently been shown, through the April senate hearings of Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerherg, to be a budding area of concern for all citizens, and especially conscientious lawyers who wish to protect their clients' information.