"The power of the voice”: virtual voice assistants, voice commands and contracting by means of voice

Abstract

Voice is a feature that individualizes and identifies us. Also, a voice is a biometric data, which means that once a voice has been processed, its owner can be identified. This allows us to state that the voice can be used as a means to authenticate the signature of an electronic contract. Therefore, biometric voice recognition techniques will make it possible to identify the owner of the voice, who will thus be giving his contractual consent. The issue could become more complicated when not only the “voiceprint” is used as a signature, but also the counterpart is a virtual voice assistant. These assistants, designed to both “answer” and “listen”, should contain strong privacy policies regarding the processing of the voices interacting with them. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the consent given both for electronic contracting by voice and for the processing of these voices by virtual assistants.