Is AI becoming Big Brother? Human presence and emotional-state detection technologies are raising civil rights alarms bells. Although they could have merits for productivity, they’re also invasive and error-prone.

On today's episode, we explore the "madness" surrounding the NCAA tournament each year, customers' reception of QR codes, soccer's rise in popularity in the US, discounts on Amazon Alexa, gaming subscriptions on the horizon, rules around how soccer players can celebrate during games, and more. Tune in to the discussion with our analysts Ross Benes and Dave Frankland and director of reports editing Rahul Chadha.

The share of US households adopting smart home devices will grow to 41.9% this year as consumers increasingly demand convenience and data transparency.

Though several of the largest smart speaker developers—including Amazon, Google, and Apple—and other retailers hope to entice more shopping and buying via voice, consumers are not nearly as enthusiastic. As a result, we have downgraded our forecasts for smart speaker shoppers and buyers from previous years.

eMarketer principal analyst Jeremy Goldman, forecasting analyst Peter Vahle, and vice president of content studio at Insider Intelligence Paul Verna discuss Spotify's strategic positioning as a complete podcasting ecosystem. They then talk about how much time Americans spend on their phones during their lifetime, why Alexa's asking follow-up questions, and what we can expect from the new "Apple One" bundle.

This report explores our latest forecasts for US voice assistant, smartphone voice assistant, and smart speaker users, and provides additional analysis about trends shaping the market.

eMarketer principal analyst Victoria Petrock discusses the shifting mindset toward worker, assistant and delivery robots and offers some examples of how they are already helping people everyday. She also explains what's holding drones back and when to expect driverless cars on the roads. Then Victoria and senior research analyst Dane Finley talk about whether telehealth is here to stay, the significance of Alexa's longer-form speaking voice and whether virtual reality is capitalizing on stay-at-home measures.

While some US consumers are warming to the idea of making voice-based purchases via smart speakers, the number of those doing so is smaller than initially estimated. In our latest forecast on smart speaker users, we lowered our outlook for the number of smart speaker buyers (people making a purchase via a smart speaker) as well as the number of smart speaker users (people who use smart speakers for any purpose).

eMarketer principal analyst Victoria Petrock explains what life will look like when voice assistants are everywhere: How will driving to work change? How will retailers and advertisers communicate with you? How would you like the voice of Samuel L. Jackson telling you what you have planned for the day?

eMarketer forecasting analyst Eric Haggstrom explores our smart speaker usage figures for Canada and the Canadian French language rollout on Amazon’s Alexa.

eMarketer principal analyst Victoria Petrock and director of research Chris Keating share the latest eMarketer forecasts on the US voice assistant market. They also explain the distinction between voice assistants and smart speakers and analyze related developments from Amazon, Google, Microsoft and more.

Amazon retired its Dash button in early March, but the branded device’s end wasn't a failure. We see it as a move to shift more replenishment buying into voice commerce.

In 2019, 5.8 million people in Canada will use a smart speaker at least once a month. That's a 51.2% increase from 2018, according to eMarketer estimates.

This report includes our forecast for smart speaker users in Canada, China, France, Germany, the UK and the US, along with a focus on adoption trends for Amazon and Google.

As baby boomers age and the 65-plus population expands, the need for healthcare services will increase rapidly. Heidi Culbertson, CEO of Marvee—a tech company that builds Alexa skills for aging adults—is among a group of healthcare providers and entrepreneurs betting that voice assistants can fill this need.

Voice-activated technology is in the early stages of development, but it has the potential to change the way healthcare brands, providers and patients interact—eventually making the healthcare system more efficient and effective.

Voice commerce holds promise. But at the moment, more consumers are turning to their Amazon Echo and Google Home devices to research products than add them to their cart.

At an eMarketer breakfast event yesterday, a panel of eMarketer analysts weighed in on Amazon and discussed the giant's future.

Technology publisher The Information rattled the digital sector with a report suggesting that the vast majority of smart speaker owners have not used the devices to make purchase, and the few who had tried voice-controlled shopping were unlikely to do it again.

Doug Robinson, CEO of Fresh Digital Group, talks about the benefits of investing in branded voice skills and the future of voice.