Smart speaker shipments, reaching 5.9 million units globally in 2016, will grow 10 fold by 2022, with revenue rising to $5.5 billion, Strategy Analytics reported Monday. Amazon's Echo dominates, but competition will heat up this year as Google Home enters its first full year of sales and others begin to build mics and virtual assistant platform-compatibility into products, the researcher said. Conversational, hands-free interaction with the internet is “very compelling,” analyst David Watkins said. With Amazon’s $50 Dot an “impulse" buy, cost isn’t expected to be a barrier to entry, analyst Bill Ablondi said.

The FTC released the agenda for its March 9 FinTech Forum on how artificial intelligence and blockchain technologies will affect consumers. The AI panel will include World Privacy Forum Executive Director Pam Dixon; ACT|The App Association Executive Director Morgan Reed; and SEC Assistant Regional Director Ken Schneider, according to the agenda. Among blockchain session's panelists will be Chamber of Digital Commerce President Perianne Boring; Justin Slaughter, chief policy adviser to Commodity Futures Trading Commissioner Sharon Bowen; and Consumers Union Staff Attorney Christina Tetreault. The event, which will be webcast, will be at the University of California, Berkeley.

Data broker and analytics companies are being urged by a coalition of civil liberties and privacy organizations not to share people's personal information that they collect with the Trump administration because it refused to rule out creating a database of Muslims. The coalition said Sunday it sent a six-page letter to nearly 50 data brokers, saying they "must not be complicit" in President Donald Trump's deportation and detention immigration policies, which could be a "disaster for human rights." The letter noted Trump's executive order restricting travel to the U.S. from seven Muslim-majority nations, which is being challenged in court. The administration is expected to unveil a revamped order this week (see 1702160059). The letter said some data brokers like Acxiom, CoreLogic and Recorded Future said they won't help build a registry. It said that even if a few companies agree to provide data or services identifying Muslims or immigrants and that data were misused, "the human rights consequences could be enormous." The letter asks the companies to disclose whether they have refused to share data with the government and also to make a pledge not to share data that could lead to such violations. Some signatories: Amnesty International, Center for Democracy & Technology, Electronic Frontier Foundation, New America's Open Technology Institute, World Privacy Forum and Alvaro Bedoya, executive director of Georgetown Law Center on Privacy & Technology. The White House didn't comment.

The Domain Name Association said it will “take additional time to consider the details” of controversial recommendations from its Healthy Domains Initiative Committee that proposed a Copyright Alternative Dispute Resolution Policy, as expected (see 1702240058). The Copyright ADRP proposal, modeled on ICANN's trademark-centric uniform dispute resolution policy, called for a voluntary third-party mechanism to address copyright infringement through the use of domain names (see 1702080085). DNA’s HDI recommendations also addressed practices for combating online abuse, child abuse imagery and “rogue” pharmaceutical companies, but the Copyright ADRP proposal received “a great deal of attention” and criticism, DNA said in a Friday blog post. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, Internet Commerce Association and other domain name interests criticized DNA over the Copyright ADRP proposal (see 1702100054). “It should be pointed out that providers of online services, including domain name registration services, appropriately establish latitude in their acceptable use policies (AUPs) or terms of service to directly address illegal behavior -- including copyright infringement,” DNA said. “If DNA members are interested in the regulation of anything, it would be in ‘regulating’ clearly illegal behavior, not in deciding what the public can see on the Internet.” Critics mischaracterized the ADRP proposal but DNA’s “concern is that worries over these seven recommendations have overshadowed the value” of the other HDI Committee proposals, DNA said. “DNA will take keen interest in any registrar’s or registry’s design and implementation of a copyright ADR, and will monitor its implementation and efficacy before refining its recommendations further.”

Recent government action on transgender issues is "troubling and goes against all that we believe in," said Yahoo in a Thursday statement. The Education and Justice departments under President Donald Trump's direction withdrew guidance issued last year that required public schools to let transgender students use bathrooms based on their gender identity. In the brief statement posted on Tumblr, Yahoo said it "has and always will recognize the inalienable right to equality for all people, regardless of sexual orientation or gender expression." In multiple news reports, Apple, Google, Microsoft and Uber also expressed similar dismay. Some of those same companies and their associations were also upset at Trump's immigration curtailment order (see 1701290001).

Webpass service will soon be available to some Denver apartments, the company said in a Wednesday post on the Google Fiber blog. The company signed its first apartment building in the area to receive the high-speed internet service, Webpass founder Charles Barr wrote. “Webpass is currently building out its local data center stack that will allow installation of point-to-point wireless radios to provide service to customers.” Also, the company named Roger Fitch general manager for the Denver business, Barr said. Google Fiber last year announced it would scale back fiber builds while exploring wireless technologies (see 1610260034) and bought last-mile gigabit wireless company Webpass (see 1610030035).

Roughly 60 percent of respondents in an Open Connectivity Foundation survey of 250 respondents at CES said they consider standardization and interoperability, cybersecurity concerns, and overall technological innovation when buying connected devices, said OCF. Lack of industry consensus on open standards and protocols is hindering IoT market growth, it said. “Without seamless interoperability among connected devices, regardless of brand or manufacturer, the Internet of Things cannot reach its full potential,” said the group. Findings from the survey: 67 percent of respondents said they owned three or more connected devices; 80 percent planned to buy a connected device in the next six months; 54 percent showed a preference for devices that connect to the Internet; 63 percent said it’s important that devices interoperate and communicate seamlessly; and 60 percent said they would be much more likely to purchase connected devices with a security certification.

If a company threatens legal action or bars a consumer's legitimate online review of a product or service, it can be disciplined by the FTC and state attorneys general, said the commission in a blog post that outlined staff guidance on how to comply with the Consumer Review Fairness Act that was passed into law in December. "It's illegal to ban honest reviews," the FTC tweeted Wednesday, a day after the post. The bipartisan law, which was heavily supported by industry and consumer groups (see 1612150021 and 1512150012), prevents businesses from using nondisparagement or gag clauses to prohibit consumers from sharing negative opinions about a company's conduct, product or service in online reviews, social media posts and uploaded photos and videos. The blog post offered information about specific conduct barred by the law, penalties for violations and what companies can do to protect themselves from "inappropriate or irrelevant content."

There’s a “growing interest” among automotive OEMs in the deployment of “Level 2-Plus” autonomous-driving systems as a "phased" prelude to more advanced Level 3 and Level 4 self-driving vehicles, said Amnon Shashua, chairman and chief technology officer at components supplier Mobileye, on a Wednesday earnings call. Society of Automotive Engineers standard J3016 defines Level 2 as vehicles with automated acceleration, braking or steering features that still must rely on a human to perform most driving functions. Level 2-Plus systems will still need the driver “to be alert,” but they also will be “rich with sensory input” to assist with semi-automated driving, Shashua said. Level 2-Plus systems have the "potential" to be deployed in “significant” volumes in “premium” vehicles, the executive said. “We believe this is going to become the next push -- still Level 2, but very advanced content of driving-assist." Mobileye "separately" will continue work on "Level 3 and Level 4 activities,” he said. SAE defines Level 3 as “conditional” automation and Level 4 as “high” automation, one notch down on the scale from Level 5 “full” autonomy, meaning a self-driving car that requires no human control in any driving scenario. Mobileye is “already engaged” with 10 automotive OEMs on Level 3 and Level 4 deployments, Shashua said. He sees Level 2-Plus adoption beginning in late 2018 or early 2019, he said. Level 2-Plus as an autonomous-driving system “is not perfect in the sense that it can cover all crash situations,” he said. But “critical safety and redundancy” features in higher levels of autonomous driving “add a lot of cost,” he said. Level 2-Plus allows OEMs “to introduce high-content systems and still require the driver to be alert and take responsibility and take control,” he said.

CEVA and Waves Audio are collaborating on far-field voice pickup and psychoacoustic enhancement solutions for mobile, smart home and wireless audio markets, they said in a Tuesday announcement. Waves’ MaxxVoice is said to improve speech recognition in far-field voice applications while using far-field voice pickup and barge-in capabilities using acoustic echo cancellation. MaxxAudio is designed for louder sound with more bass, they said. “Voice is becoming a primary interface to control and interact, requiring advanced algorithms and processors to deliver a seamless experience," said Tomer Elbaz, Waves general manager-consumer electronics. The company’s technology with CEVA’s audio/voice digital signal processor offers an embedded solution for a low-power audio or voice-enabled platform, he said.