Eli5: How does Google ‘listen’ to you? Is there actually a program running in the background on your phone that records your voice and sends it to google?
In: 2057
If you’re talking about the Google Assistant, remember when it asked you to say “Ok Google” when you set it up? It uses that and a mic. It keeps listening, and if what you said in the mic matches your own unique “Ok Google”, it will record what you say after that and search the internet.
If you’re talking about ads, unless you’re using the Google Assistant, Google isn’t actually listening to you.
It just knows which websites you visit frequently if they’re using Google Analytics or visited from Google Search, which apps you use to login with your Gmail or Google Workplace, which videos you like to watch on YouTube, or if you’re on Android, everything you do on your phone.
Based on these and several other signals, it creates your digital twin – an identical version of who you are online. Then it serves ads for your twin. Above 95% of the time, that twin is actually you.
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