New study finds that people are too trusting of virtual assistants

Attributing lifelike qualities to virtual assistants could cause people to reveal more personal information to the companies that own them than they otherwise would, according to a new study.

Researchers at the University of Waterloo, who conducted the study, found that people tend to increase their sharing with online agents such as Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri, due to their tendency to assign them personalities and physical features such as age, facial expressions and hairstyles.