MOUNTAIN VIEW — Controversy over Google’s new messaging app Allo erupted within hours of its release Tuesday night.
Edward Snowden, the former federal government contractor who leaked National Security Agency data, was unequivocal: “Don’t use Allo,” he tweeted.
At issue for privacy advocates is the artificial intelligence that Google says adds value to the app — but requires the company to read, analyze and hold onto a user’s messaging and other interactions.
Allo, first announced at Google’s I/O developers’ conference in May, went live Tuesday night for Android and iPhones. Competing with Facebook’s Messenger and Apple’s iMessage as a chatting app, it also contains a bot — called Google Assistant — to go up against Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa. The assistant can be invoked within a chat by typing “@Google.”
“All of us want this kind of idea of a valet,” said cybersecurity analyst Dimitri Sirota, CEO of data protection firm BigID. “We see the value in the on-demand environment of having intelligence in the background helping anticipate your needs. It’s incredibly valuable, and I’m sure it’s going to do well.”
Within the messaging function, the AI uses chat histories to suggest written or emoji responses, a service the company calls “Smart Reply.” Users can send a response by tapping it.
The assistant can answer questions and suggest websites, and draw from a user’s search history to give personalized suggestions. It can draw on a user’s inputs to Google services — for example, finding images in Google Photos — or call up appointments made in Calendar.
To address privacy concerns, Google allows users to select end-to-end encryption of messaging by using “Incognito” mode, which means only the sender and recipient can see the conversation. Allo users also can delete all message text and interactions with the assistant.
“We’ve given users transparency and control over their data in Google Allo,” a Google spokeswoman said. “And our approach is simple — your chat history is saved for you until you choose to delete it. You can delete single messages or entire conversations in Allo. We also built Incognito mode directly into the product, giving users control if they want their messages to be end-to-end encrypted, and you can set a timer to automatically delete messages on your device, and the recipient’s, at a set time.”
The AI services, such as “Smart Reply” to messages and the assistant, will not work in Incognito mode because stored information is necessary to fuel the AI.
“If you want that whole kind of motherhood thing where they anticipate what you need, you can’t (end-to-end) encrypt the data,” Sirota said.
And if messages are deleted, the AI has nothing to work with and can’t provide smart replies until more messages are logged, according to Google.
Offering the totally encrypted option creates a problem, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
“When you have both secure and unsecure modes, you’ve essentially made your secure mode worthless because the possibility of messing it up is considerable,” said EFF global policy analyst Eva Galperin. If a person mistakenly believes they’re in incognito mode when using Allo, a record of their Allo interaction could end up in the hands of police via a warrant, or lawyers in a civil case via a subpoena, Galperin said.
The AI and voice-operation capability in Allo represent a trend toward what’s being referred to as “conversational computing,” said Gartner analyst Andrew Frank.
“We’re seeing a paradigm shift where computing is less about typing things in and getting results and more about conversational access to information,” Frank said. “I see a large portion of interactions going in that direction. We’ve only started to wake up to how big a change it can be if we can interact with our computers without using our hands and our eyes.”
Of course, Google monetizes some customer data, and Allo is no exception. Interactions with the assistant may be used to deliver personalized ads with search results, according to the company. Chat texts are not used for advertising purposes, Google said.
