Hello, great to have your company again. You're listening to MX's weekly podcast covering the top

regulatory stories from around the globe. I'm James Feneke. And today we're talking biometrics. My voice that you're

listening to at this very point in time, whatever its many limitations, is unique to me.

It's a physical attribute that can, in theory at least, be collected and analyzed to identify me.

It's my vocal fingerprint. So why is that important today?

Well, because the accumulation and use of biometric data is fast becoming a significant

issue of debate within regulatory circles. And the reason for that is pretty obvious.

We're increasingly using our voice to direct our smart devices.

Now firstly there's a privacy issue here and we'll see how that's playing out in the US at the moment

and then we'll consider the antitrust implications by examining a forward-looking study in the European Union that delves into this very issue. Lewis Crofts will join us from

Brussels in just over 10 minutes time. Mike Swift is M-Mex's chief global digital risk correspondent,

and he joins me now from San Francisco. Okay, Mike, now firstly, tell me what ordering a bag of

French fries at McDonald's has to do with

emerging technology and privacy issues.

Well, I think most people, when their tummy is rumbling and they pull up in the drive-through

window at McDonald's, they don't think that the pimply-faced kid, you know, taking

their order might be part of a big

artificial intelligence apparatus. But a lawsuit, which was recently filed in Chicago,

alleges that that's exactly what's happening, that McDonald's acquired an AI company, a voice recognition company in 2019, which it is planning to use

to not only make the pimply faced kid less necessary to take your order, but to essentially

create files so it would know its customers and what they had ordered in the past and

would help, you know, tailor their order to future orders. So it's a very interesting case,

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