Hangouts eavesdrops on your chats to offer 'smart suggestions'

19 Dec 2014 • engadget.com

Google’s Hangouts is gaining a handy, but slightly creepy new feature today. The popular chat app will now act as a digital spy-slash-valet by eavesdropping on your conversations to offer “smart suggestions.” For instance, if a pal asks “where are you?” it’ll immediately prompt you to share your location, then open a map so you can pin it precisely. It’ll also try to help if it detects certain other phrases in a conversation using artificial intelligence tech that Google recently purchased from a company called Emu. Google said the suggestions are “the start of something new,” which may not reassure folks already concerned that it’s a tad too invasive already. To be fair, though, it’s not far from how Google currently monitors email and searches to deliver targeted ads.

“To be fair, they were already creepy - so more creepy is just more of the same.” Sounds like solid logic to me.