Google TV recognition system gets tongues wagging

Stan Beer
Tuesday, 20 June 2006 10:15

Your IT - Home IT

Picture this scenario. You're seated at your PC surfing the web and in the next room a clearly audible episode of "Lost" is playing on TV. The next thing you know a pop-message appears with a link to a "Lost" discussion group on the MySpace site. What just happened is that your PC recognized that "Lost" was playing on your TV.

Believe it or not, this is exactly the sort of technology the Google researchers Michele Covell and Shumeet Baluja have developed and presented last month at the Euro ITV interactive television conference in Greece. How it works roughly is that your PC samples and digitally records the audio signals in your home and sends to it to Google's massive data center which then matches it to its database of programs.
Microsoft has reportedly recently patented similar technology.

While the technology is still in its embryonic stage, the applications for personalisation of data and ad serving are obvious. If you can recognise what TV shows and ads a family is watching on TV, you can theoretically tailor the content and advertising that you serve up to them.

In addition, the applications that TV program recognition systems may have for TV content providers have started tongues wagging about real-time popularity ratings services that could make current ratings systems obsolete. With real-time data on TV viewing being fed down the line, Google could conceivably provide a service to programmers and advertisers that would enable them to be far more responsive to audience sentiment.

An issue that has been raised, however, is the question of privacy. Regardless of statements of reassurance from Covell and Baluja, many consumers will not be comfortable with having a listening device recording audio data in homes. The researchers say that the system will not be able to understand conversations. However, one can imagine the potential for paranoia being generated by the knowledge that a Google or Microsoft data center has a direct audio feed into a person's home.