Tilt Brush launched on the Oculus Rift today, and I had a chance to catch up with Tilt Brush product manager Elisabeth Morant, launching. We have a broad discussion about adapting Tilt Brush for the Touch controllers, the Tilt Brush Artist in Residency Program, the Tiltbrush Unity Toolkit, and some of the features coming in the future potentially including a layering system and more non-intuitive and unexpected features similar to audio reactive brushes. I also asked about privacy in VR, but Google has yet to disclose any information about what they may or may not be capturing.
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Some of the most newsworthy parts about my interview with Morant were regarding things that weren’t talked about. When asked to comment about this being the first VR collaboration between Facebook & Google, Morant said that Google is “really looking to push virtual reality as a platform.” There’s been a tense history between Google and Facebook, and releasing Tilt Brush via Oculus Home is the first collaboration in the VR space that we’ve seen from the two tech giants.
This also means that it’s the first Google app that’s being released within the context of Oculus’ Privacy policy, which states that physical movements can be recorded and tied back to your Facebook profile. Facebook will be able to capture and store physical movements of users who are using Google’s application, and then this data could be connected to a unified Facebook super profile that pulls in data from third parties. Up to this point Google hasn’t made any VR-specific updates to their Privacy policy that explicitly accounts for what may or may not be recorded in VR and then connected back to your Google profile.
I asked Morant about this overlapping privacy policy dynamic between Google and Facebook during my interview, and Google’s PR liaison said that we could follow up after the interview for more information. I did follow up after the interview, and Google is indeed looking at the possibility of updating their privacy policy by saying “it is something that we are looking at, but nothing to share at this time.”
But Google dodged answering about what they may or may not already be recording in VR, again. I previously asked a follow-up question about what data they’re capturing in my my previous interview about Google Earth VR, but I received a generic boilerplate answer. When I asked again, they basically sent back the same non-answer.
Non-answers to hard to write about and cover, and so they usually serve the purpose of not talking about it. But it also reinforces the impression that privacy in VR is the big elephant in the room that no one wants to really talk about. So I maintained the integrity of my original questions within the context of the podcast interview, and I’ve also included the full context of my follow-up exchange with Google PR below.
I just had a follow-up question about privacy with some reference material. I’d love to get some more specific answers from a privacy expert on your side, and swap that more detailed information to put at the end within my wrap-up. If there’s someone there who I could speak to directly, then that would be preferable. A written response also works, but not quite as well within the podcast medium because I end up having to speak words on your behalf.
At this moment, Google’s Privacy policy does not have any language that is specific for any virtual reality technologies, and there are no controls for VR data that might be recorded listed within the “My Account” Privacy dashboard.
My question: Is any physical movement data of either the head or hands from in any VR experiences being recorded and saved by Google?
Oculus’ Privacy Policy states that “Information about your physical movements and dimensions when you use a virtual reality headset” are being captured and stored as part of the “Information Automatically Collected About You When You Use Our Services.”
In my previous interview about Google Earth VR, I followed up with some questions about privacy and you sent back a prepared statement that I included within both my written and spoken write-up. Here’s that passage:
Google Earth VR is a free application for the Vive on Steam VR, and so I had a couple of follow up questions for Google after my interview. I asked them: “What kind of data can and cannot be collected given Google’s standard Privacy Policy within a VR experience?” and “Are there long-term plans to evolve Google’s Privacy Policy given how VR represents the ability to passively capture more and more intimate biometric data & behavioral data?”
Here is Google’s response:
Our users trust us with their information and we outline how it may be used across Google — to personalize experiences, to improve products, and more — in our Privacy policy. Users can control the information they share with Google in ‘My Account’.”
Google’s previous response didn’t actually really directly answer my question. Google’s Privacy policy does not have any language that is specific for any virtual reality technologies, and there are no controls for VR data that might be recorded listed within the My Account Privacy dashboard.
- Does this mean that no virtual reality specific data is being recorded or captured from Google?
- Or if there is data being collected from VR, will we see an update to Google’s Privacy Policy that discloses what is being recorded?
For more context, here’s an interview and essay that I did with a privacy expert since the last time I spoke with Google.
Thanks for willing to take a look at this, and I look forward to getting some more specific answers than Elisabeth was able to provide.
Here’s the response that I got from Google:
We don’t have a privacy expert available for you to speak to for the podcast. In regards to your question about an updated privacy policy – it is something that we are looking at, but nothing to share at this time. As soon as we have any updates, we’ll let you know. The statement we provided before still applies:
“Our users trust us with their information and we outline how it may be used across Google — to personalize experiences, to improve products, and more — in our Privacy policy. Users can control the information they share with Google in ‘My Account’.”
Google is looking to potentially update their privacy policy with more information about what is or isn’t recorded, but up to this point they haven’t disclosed any information about what they’re capturing. There’s been no updates to the Privacy policy to account for any new VR technologies, and there’s no VR data that’s being tied back to the ‘My Account’ tab on your Google account.
If there are any VR data that would show up on the ‘My Account’ tab, then that would imply that Google has been able to correlate VR-captured data back to your personal identifiable Google account. But there are no controls for VR data on ‘My Account,’ and so if data is being captured, then there’s no way for a user to control or look at what’s been captured.
I’ve asked Google twice now what data they’re recording, and both times they’ve avoided answering with a direct answer. Privacy in VR is a hard topic to cover, especially when the major players don’t really want to talk about it. I wrote extensively in this article about the privacy implications of VR and how VR has the potential to become on of the most powerful surveillance technologies or the last bastion of privacy depending on the types of user demands are placed upon the systems that are built. Sarah Downey argues against companies capturing too much data and storing it forever, and so it’s important for companies to have transparency about what they’re doing.
Google appears to be failing on the privacy transparency front by avoiding answering simple questions. What data are you recording in VR? Is it being tied back to personally identifiable information? And if so, then when can we see updates to the privacy policy to reflect that?
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.452] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast. My name is Kent Bye, and welcome to The Voices of VR Podcast. So on today's episode, we have Elizabeth Morant from Google. She's a product manager on the Daydream team, and she's been working on Tilt Brush. And so the big news for this podcast is that Tilt Brush is launching on the Oculus Rift, which means that this is kind of like the first real collaboration between Google and Facebook. Tilt Brush has been released on the HTC Vive, and until the Oculus Rift had the touch controllers, there wasn't really much of a way to port it over. On this podcast, we talk a bit about the process and motivation and some of the news that's coming out on Tilt Brush launching on the Rift. And also some of the most interesting parts of this interview to me are also some of the things that weren't being said or weren't being answered when I asked the question about privacy and virtuality in particular. So we'll be unpacking that a little bit more at the end of this episode. So we'll be covering that on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. But first, a quick word from our sponsor. Today's episode is brought to you by the Voices of VR Patreon campaign. The Voices of VR podcast started as a passion project, but now it's my livelihood. And so if you're enjoying the content on the Voices of VR podcast, then consider it a service to you in the wider community and send me a tip. Just a couple of dollars a month makes a huge difference, especially if everybody contributes. So donate today at patreon.com slash Voices of VR. So this interview with Elizabeth happened on February 10th, 2017. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.
[00:01:54.503] Elisabeth Morant: My name is Elizabeth Moran and I am a product manager on the Google Daydream team, uh, in particular working on Tilt Brush. And I've been on the Tilt Brush team for about a year now. I joined in March right before we launched for the five.
[00:02:09.066] Kent Bye: Okay, great. So maybe you could tell me a bit about some of the news that you're announcing with this new platform.
[00:02:14.501] Elisabeth Morant: Yeah, so we are launching Tilt Brush for the Oculus Rift. We're going to be launching it on the 21st of February. And the Oculus version will be at feature parity with the Vive. But we've taken special care to really optimize for the new Oculus Touch hardware. And so we're taking advantage of a lot of the features that the controllers have to offer.
[00:02:39.250] Kent Bye: Yeah, I think ergonomically, the thing that I noticed is that the Oculus Touch controllers feel really great to work with. I think there's a little bit of a trade-off though, in terms of the constraints of forward facing, such that when I started to spin around, I only have two cameras, but I can't have the same type of walking around an entire room and still be able to draw and tilt brush like I do in the Vive. But given that constraint of just trying to be aware of the cameras and not spin around like I may do in the normal drawing, maybe you could talk a bit about some of the other optimizations that you had to make in order to really convert what was designed for the Vive and the room scale with that tracking system and then porting it over to Oculus Rift and the touch controllers.
[00:03:24.568] Elisabeth Morant: Sure. Um, actually a couple of months ago, we started thinking about how we could take the room scale experience that we had built for the Vive and bring it to people who may not have full range of motion. And so we were looking at people who use seated VR, and maybe they had smaller play areas. And that's what inspired us to make a feature that allows you to rotate and resize your canvas. And so using the grip buttons, you can move around your sketch. So even if you're seated and facing one direction, you can still create masterpieces of the size of somebody who, say, has an entire room to play. And so we launched that back in September. in anticipation of also coming to more platforms. And so when we decided to launch on the Oculus Rift, it naturally helped us reach that entire audience by giving them full accessibility on that new hardware.
[00:04:14.898] Kent Bye: Yeah, one of the other things about the Oculus Touch controllers is because they have the two buttons that are pretty easy to use, as well as with the joystick that is an analog joystick rather than, you know, something that you swipe. I think there's some new user interface stuff that you could potentially do, but yet, because you're designing it for both platforms, you can't necessarily fork and create new features. But I'm curious to hear your process of what types of things you're able to do and map over to The Oculus touch controllers that were unique with the buttons and the joystick that you had available now.
[00:04:49.875] Elisabeth Morant: Yeah. So the thumb stick and the thumb pad difference is a great example. So initially when we started the port, we were using the thumb stick in the same way that we do the thumb pad on the Vive, where it's a granular swiping motion, which then gradually swaps the panels or makes them spin around your hand. And we realized that on the touch controllers, it didn't really feel as natural. And so we switched the behavior such that it's more of a toggle. So when you push the thumbstick right or left, it's one swooping motion that then switches the panel that you're looking at on your palette controller.
[00:05:27.652] Kent Bye: And maybe you could talk a bit about your Tilt Brush Artist in Residency program and some of the feedback that you started to get from these professional artists who may be coming from a 2D realm, but starting to use this immersive VR illustration program at Tilt Brush.
[00:05:43.640] Elisabeth Morant: Sure. Yeah. So we started an Artist in Residence program last year where we brought in over 60 artists who came from a wide range of disciplines. So everyone from comic book artists to fine artists, animators, concept artists. all sorts of backgrounds. And our goal was to really push the potential of creativity in VR and in Tilt Brush. And so a core part of this program was working directly with artists to improve the product. And so they sat in the room with us, our engineering team collaborated with artists, and we were really inspired by the work that they made and the requirements they had to build new features for the product and really expand it.
[00:06:26.020] Kent Bye: Yeah, one of the things I've noticed in myself and also watching some of the first paintings from artists that come from a 2D medium is that I think there's a certain amount of getting used to the unique affordances of painting in 3D space. I think at the first brush, most people tend to still make art that would work just the same in a 2D medium, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts about that evolutionary process that happens with artists as they start to move into an immersive environment with VR. And what you see is kind of like those milestones or switches in their brain where they get to kind of understand these fundamental concepts of what's it means to actually paint in a volumetric way.
[00:07:07.521] Elisabeth Morant: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. So a lot of people, um, well, most people really, whether you're an artist or not, you know, the first thing they do until brushes, they draw their name or they draw a smiley face. And then, you know, you ask someone to walk around their art and they realize that it's actually 3D. And so for that reason, this isn't specific to artists, but when we run usability studies, often the question that we ask is for people to make a palm tree because trees are inherently, you know, people will start making the tree and then realize pretty quickly that you can use volumetric space to make a trunk and then the branches off the tree. And so using guidance like that, you can get people to pretty quickly realize the potential of painting in space and people pick it up pretty quickly.
[00:07:51.540] Kent Bye: Yeah. Another thing that was announced recently was this toolkit, this Tilt Brush toolkit that could export your files and start to put them into Unity to add additional code and music. Maybe you could talk a bit about this integration with Unity that you have now and what that enables.
[00:08:09.858] Elisabeth Morant: Yeah, so the toolkit is something that I am very excited about. It is a set of tools that allow developers to create immersive, interactive experiences using sketches that they initially created in Tilt Brush. And so this really unlocks the potential for people to create games, music videos, movies, interactive virtual experiences for people who maybe aren't naturally 3D artists, but know how to pick up a controller and paint in Tilt Brush. And so it's really exciting for us.
[00:08:45.202] Kent Bye: I'm curious to hear a little bit more about your own personal experience with virtual reality, like the first time that you actually got a chance to try out Tilt Brush.
[00:08:54.567] Elisabeth Morant: Yeah, so the first time I tried out Tilt Brush was late 2015. And my first reaction was to sign my name. I didn't see that in space. And then my friend, who was on the Google VR team at the time, showed me the space environment. And at that moment, my mind was totally blown, because I was right in front of the moon, and I could paint on the moon. And who does not want to walk on or interact with the moon? And at that point, I was totally sold.
[00:09:26.444] Kent Bye: Yeah, I think one of the things that I really enjoy about Tilt Brush is the thing that was just added recently, which is the audio reactive brushes, where you can play music in the background and just gives this extra additional visceral feel of actually being immersed within the process of creation. And so maybe you could talk about that process of creating these audio reactive brushes and what you were trying to do with those.
[00:09:50.961] Elisabeth Morant: Sure. Yeah. So one of the primary goals for us is to give people new ways to express themselves in VR and through Tilt Brush. And so audio reactive brushes came out of a desire to introduce music into the product. And we thought, what better way than to turn Tilt Brush into a music visualizer? And so we spent a lot of time working on developing new brushes that were optimized for music while also bringing audio reactivity to old brushes. And it was really fun to see how we might change the behavior of a brush when you turn on music, because there was quite a bit of debate as to how much we wanted the actual visual style of a brush to change when you turn on music versus when you don't, because it potentially could completely change the format and the look and feel of a sketch.
[00:10:44.052] Kent Bye: One of the things in talking to Oculus in the process of their creation of Quill, which is kind of the equivalent of the Tilt Brush. It's like this painterly illustration VR art program. And I think one of the things that they told me was that one of the design considerations that they had was to make it a non-opinionated piece of software, meaning that when you looked at a piece of art, you could more readily identify the artist rather than the tool that created that piece of art. And I feel like Tilt Brush is doing this trade-off where it actually has some very strong opinions on different brushes, where you could see a creation made within Tilt Brush and be able to very quickly identify, yeah, that was definitely created in Tilt Brush, rather than the artist who created it. But yet, at the same time, the trade-off of that is that it actually makes people who aren't trained artists be able to go into the experience and have that feeling of creating something that was completely awesome. So I'm curious to kind of hear that process as you're designing this tool and moving forward, that balance between creating this non-opinionated tool for artists to be able to create whatever they want versus a tool for anybody to go in there and make something that looks amazing.
[00:11:55.965] Elisabeth Morant: Yeah. One of our core goals for Tilt Brush is to maintain a very low and quick learning curve, but a high skill ceiling. And so for everyone, their first time using Tilt Brush, it should be pretty easy to pick up a controller, paint, change colors, change brushes, and create something that looks beautiful. And at the same time, we're also continuing to grow the product to enable artists who maybe spend more time in Tilt Brush or have more artistic inclination to make sketches that are really works of art. And so you can see, if you look at the Artists-in-Residence website, that there are several artists whose style really jumps out and is a little bit evolved from the standard Topr style. So an example would be Peter Chan, who is a concept artist. If you look at the pieces that he's done, it really looks like you have stepped into something that he drew in 2D, but in full volumetric space.
[00:12:57.969] Kent Bye: Yeah, I'm wondering if you could comment on some of the other surprising applications that you've seen people use Tilt Brush for. I know that I've seen some people start to teach calculus and actually kind of like draw out equations or to do scene planning for VR experiences. So I'm curious to hear what you've seen, how people are using this tool.
[00:13:21.303] Elisabeth Morant: Yeah, the calculus one is one of my favorites because that was a very Unexpected seeing people actually do math in Tilt Brush. But yeah, we've seen a number of different applications for it. Of course, there are artists who are creating full sketches and pieces of art inside Tilt Brush, but there are also a number of people who will start creating a sketch in Tilt Brush and then bring it into another program to add effects to it. One of the inspirations for the toolkit was we started to see people create small games using Tilt Brush assets, and so we wanted to enable do that using our shaders to make the assets actually look like they came from Tilt Brush. We've seen designers start using it to mock up designs for 2D and for 3D. We've seen a whole host of uses for it and we're really excited to explore more potential uses in the future.
[00:14:10.774] Kent Bye: I think one of the biggest complaints about Tilt Brush at this point is that there's no ability to do layers or to grab something and move it around once you've created it. So I'm curious to hear what the plan is moving forward to potentially add additional layers of complexity in terms of what you're able to actually manipulate a creation, but to be able to expand the complexity of creations that are possible.
[00:14:35.170] Elisabeth Morant: We are largely motivated by our community And we hear that feedback. I spend a lot of time on Twitter and Facebook and the product forums listening to what people are asking for. And so, you know, we're working to bring more features to Tilt Brush that make sense, that enable new forms of creation, while also cooking up a few ideas that maybe aren't as obvious like audio reactive brushes.
[00:15:00.977] Kent Bye: Now, in terms of eventually bringing this to Daydream, is a three DOF controller ever going to be quite enough to get the full Tilt Brush experience, or are we going to have to wait until we actually have six DOF hand-track controllers in a mobile space before we can see Tilt Brush on a mobile headset?
[00:15:18.487] Elisabeth Morant: So we know that VR users with other hardware are interested in Tilt Brush, and today's launch on the Rift is really just a start to bringing our VR apps to new platforms, and we really hope for more to come. Daydream in particular is very interesting to us. As you know, Tilt Brush was built for 6DoF headsets, 6DoF controllers, and so there are naturally a few challenges when it comes to creating a port that is at full parity on that type of hardware.
[00:15:46.837] Kent Bye: Well, I think one of the things that I think is actually really impressive, probably people don't realize all that had to go into the engineering behind that, but in order to maintain the 90 frames per second with the type of complexity of the things that you're drawing, maybe you could talk a bit about what you had to do in order to hit the 90 frames a second on a high-end PC to get the Tilt Brush experience that you have right now.
[00:16:09.334] Elisabeth Morant: A lot. I don't know if I'm the right person to dive into all the complexities that went into developing the full experience for the Vive, but I can tell you it was not easy.
[00:16:22.602] Kent Bye: Yeah, I think it's probably one of the things that you notice it when it doesn't go well. But my own personal experience of using it is that I haven't had too many experiences of it dropping frames. So it just is a pretty reliable experience. And it's also, I think, one of the experiences that in the history of VR has been a pretty crucial example of the potential of being able to use VR for a creative output. So maybe you could just comment for what you've seen, what's been inspired from Tilt Brush as a tool.
[00:16:53.175] Elisabeth Morant: Yeah, we've seen a lot of great pieces come out of our community. So in Tilt Brush, we have this showcase where we identify some of the best sketches that we've seen, and we put them inside of Tilt Brush so that anybody can experience them. And before the Artists-in-Residence program, the vast majority of those we found through Twitter and other social media platforms. And so we launched the Artists-in-Residence program to reach more people and expand that community and we're starting to put more artist-in-residence pieces in the showcases as well, and we'll continue to over the coming weeks. And next year, I'm really excited to continue to work with artists and see what people create.
[00:17:32.862] Kent Bye: And maybe you could comment a little bit of this is really kind of the first collaboration that I've seen between Google and Oculus slash Facebook of bringing some of the products that you've been developing for what has traditionally been on the Vive and the room scale. But why has it taken so long? What were some of the other things that were holding this up to get to this point right now?
[00:17:56.307] Elisabeth Morant: Yeah, we're really looking to push forward virtual reality as a platform. And so a key part of that is bringing high quality experiences like Tilt Brush to more products and more platforms. And as far as why it took so long, so Tilt Brush was built for 6DoF headset and controllers. And so it really became an option for us to bring Tilt Brush to the Rift once the touch controller shipped. And so pretty much as soon as we knew that the touch controllers were coming, we started thinking about how we might launch Tilt Brush on this product.
[00:18:32.059] Kent Bye: I see. And, you know, one of the things that I've noticed just in the terms of the privacy policy that's different between Oculus and Vive is that Oculus actually says in the privacy policy that they have the capability to record your physical movements and potentially save and store them and correlate them to a user profile and I guess that's one thing that I'm curious because I haven't seen any specific thing from Google in terms of the privacy policy that's laying out what may or may not be recorded in any of these different types of experiences and just the fact that you're starting to now be integrated with Oculus sort of implies that now Facebook and Oculus could start to record our physical movements and, you know, correlate them to our user identity. But I'm just curious if you could comment on, you know, if we're going to start to see any specific language in the privacy policy that starts to call out what you are or are not recording within a VR environment.
[00:19:30.362] Elisabeth Morant: So the Google Terms of Service specifically for Tilt Brush allows artists full ownership of the sketches that they create in Tilt Brush, and so they can use them however they want. And I don't know much about the Oculus policy that you're referring to.
[00:19:50.595] Kent Bye: Oh yeah, it's just part of their privacy policy that says that physical movements are things that they can start to record. When I take a look at all the different privacy policies of all the different VR companies, a lot of the companies haven't necessarily explicitly said what they are or are not recording, but Oculus has been the only company so far that has come out saying, hey, we can basically record and store these physical movements. because it's an application that is running through Oculus then this is the first time that I've seen this dynamic between Google and Facebook where through the process of going in and being in Tilt Brush this is something that they could start to record. I think the big question I have is just in terms of what types of information is potentially being saved and stored and recorded because up to this point we haven't seen a lot of information that has come out in these privacy policies that have said either way, like what is or is not being recorded?
[00:20:46.884] Elisabeth Morant: We can actually look into that and get back to you on this.
[00:20:51.946] Kent Bye: Okay. Okay. So what do you want to experience in VR then?
[00:20:56.529] Elisabeth Morant: That's a great question. So I'm really excited about new forms of expression and creativity in VR. And that's why I work on Tilt Brush and why I'm excited about this space. And so I'm really excited to see what people come up with pushing this medium forward and allowing people to not only just sit back and experience art, but also create new things. And so I'm excited about new areas in that domain.
[00:21:28.155] Kent Bye: Awesome. And finally, what do you see as kind of the ultimate potential of virtual reality and what it might be able to enable?
[00:21:37.688] Elisabeth Morant: What a question to end on. You know, it's funny, whenever I hear questions like that, it's almost like asking what is the potential of reality? Like, what is the killer use case for existence? And, you know, really, for VR, I'm not going to give you the right answer, but for me personally, it's really about giving people experiences that they can't have in real life and making people feel like they're doing magic and experiencing something that they couldn't in the real world. And that's really the potential and the excitement of VR.
[00:22:17.509] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. So that was Elizabeth Morant. She's a product manager on the Google Daydream team working on Tilt Brush. So I have a number of different takeaways about this interview is that first of all I think this is a pretty straightforward interview where I was able to really say about everything that I wanted to about Tilt Brush within the context of the interview. I mean, I think Tilt Brush is amazing and it's done a huge amount to be able to push forward what's even possible with the potential for creativity within virtual reality. Now, in terms of the big elephant in the room, I think it's privacy. And, you know, in the context of this interview, I had the Public Relations liaison kind of jump in and say, hey, you know, let's follow up on this question that you're asking here and we'll get you more information. So this is the follow-up that I got. I basically sent an email to them saying that I would really love to have access to a privacy expert on their side to be able to ask them more specific questions to just get a sense of what's being recorded and some of the potential trade-offs of that. So their answer was, we don't have a privacy expert that's available for you to speak to for the podcast. And in regards to your questions about an updated privacy policy, it is something that we are looking at, but nothing to share at this time. As soon as we have any updates, we'll let you know. And the statement that was provided last time still applies. And that's basically this canned PR response. When I asked them, OK, well, it's being recorded, they sent back this statement saying, our users trust us with the information. And we outline how it may be used across Google to personalize experiences, to improve products, and more. In our privacy policy, users can control the information they share with Google in My Account. So if you use any Google services, they're making this assumption that all their users trust them with all their data, and that there's benefits like being able to personalize experiences and get feedback into the products so they can be improved, and that if you want to be able to control the things that are or are not being recorded, then you can go to the My Account settings and be able to uncheck a bunch of different things that are being recorded. So my reaction to this is just simply that I don't think they really answered the question at all. The question was, what are you recording? And they said, okay, you can't talk to anybody, we're looking at a privacy policy, we may update it. And here's the same statement we said last time, which is that our users trust us. And you can go to my controls to be able to change it. But again, you can't actually go to my controls, because there are no information there about anything that's being recorded and there's nothing that's disclosed in the privacy policy and just the fact that I'm asking okay what's being recorded and you know twice now it's basically like we're not gonna tell you what we're recording just gives me the suspicion of like okay well I'm just gonna assume the worst then because you're not telling me anything. You know I didn't actually expect that there was gonna be a big in-depth answer about privacy from this specific product manager in Google. Yeah, at the same time, I wanted to just ask the question to get it on the record to see if I could get a response. And I don't want to have to, like, nag every single person that I ever talked to with Google and just get the runaround. I just actually want the answer answered by the most expert person. Just tell me the answer, and I'll stop asking the question. So this is, I think, the entire dilemma of why this issue is so difficult to cover, because they just don't want to talk about it, clearly. I mean, if they would, they would just answer the question. which then puts an emphasis as to why this is such an important topic to try to cover because it's like the biggest elephant in the room in the entire VR community. So anyway I'm gonna keep trying you know with these companies and you know I don't want to feel like I'm bum-rushing people but they know who I am they know what's going on and I've asked them multiple times and I just hope at some point I just get a straight answer and that's all I want. So a quick primer as to why I think privacy and virtual reality is a very important topic that's worth really diving into. I did this interview with Sarah Downey back in episode 493 and a couple of big takeaways from that. One is that there's this specific class of private information that's called personally identifiable information. That's PII. That's anything that can tie that piece of data to you and your identity. That could be anywhere from a name, a street address, a telephone number, a social security number, an IP address, an address. All these things are pieces of data that tie you back to your identity and they have a lot of controls to protect that information and to not share it out to people. And then there's this whole other class of data that is like different button pushes on a website, mouse clicks, all this stuff that is kind of generalized and anonymizable information. And that's another bucket of information. So I think the big question that is going to be happening within virtual reality is that at this point, anything that may be recorded within the context of a VR experience, whether it's your physical movements, like Oculus has come out and said that, OK, we're recording your physical movements, including how you're turning your head and how you're moving your hands. you know, that's, you know, a bunch of abstract numbers that doesn't really correlate to anything. But the deal is, is that, first of all, that information could actually identify you if you're walking around and have a specific gait. An artificial intelligent program would be able to potentially at some point be able to identify you personally. And so the other thing is that the type of information and data that's recorded within VR is only going to get so much more intimate. starting with this basic rudimentary physical movements, but it's going to get into like eye tracking, eye gaze, and if they have EEG, then that could get into brain thoughts and intent and with facial tracking, emotional states. So you have all this really super intimate data that could be actually correlated to where you're at in a virtual environment and what you're actually looking at. That starts to get into all sorts of surveillance, state big brother, nightmare, dystopian futures. There is the other side of the coin is that VR could actually be one of the last bastions of privacy if a lot of controls are put into place. And one of the things that Sarah Downey is saying is that you just shouldn't be recording all this information if you don't actually need it or are using it. And I think you get these big, huge companies like both Facebook and Google is that they just have the vacuum cleaner on all the time, sucking up as much information and data on us as they possibly can. And not only that, they're tying it back to your personally identifiable information on their side, which is fine if you have perfect security, but nobody ever has perfect security. So anything that they're storing could potentially get hacked. Or the other thing is that if the government comes in and says, you know, hey, we want to see the emotional states for Kent Bye for everything he's ever looked at in VR for, you know, the past five years, you know, there's nothing that they can do to stop from giving all that data over into the government. So, you know, at this point, they're using it to be able to inform all their algorithms to be able to categorize me into all these different buckets of advertisements, so they can sell me ads, essentially. But, you know, that information could potentially get in the hands of either a hacker or the federal government that could turn into a turnkey tyranny at any moment. So I think the point that Sarah Downey is making larger within the context of the Fourth Amendment, which is protecting our privacy, is that it's kind of based upon a cultural expectation of what's a reasonable expectation for privacy. And so if, as a culture, we're collectively deciding to just share all of our emotional states, eye gaze, and thought forms, and physical movements, and virtual reality, all these different things, then we're kind of saying, you know, okay, we're okay with that. We're okay with sharing all this. And it kind of weakens our Fourth Amendment protection rights. And then with that lack of privacy, then there's a lack of authentic communication because you're always kind of like, oh, can't say that because that's going to go on my permanent record and stored forever. So that's the kind of thing that we're dealing with is that we have this kind of veil of inauthenticity that could be cultivated by the lack of privacy and all these other sort of worst case scenarios of having all this information stored. So it's just a very simple question. What data are you recording and storing on me? It's being tied back to my personally identifiable information through like an IP address. And are you going to update your privacy policy to disclose what you're actually recording and whether or not you're doing that? So anyway, that hopefully gives you a little bit more context as to why I think virtual reality and privacy is an important issue to keep asking these questions, even if they're not being answered. It's still important to get it on the record and to eventually, hopefully get some more clear answers on to what's going on here. So, anyway, that's all that I have for today. I just wanted to thank you for joining me on the Voices of VR podcast. And if you enjoy the podcast, then please do tell your friends, spread the word. And, you know, I really could use some help on Patreon. You know, there's a consistent amount of money that I get every month from the Patreon that really does help sustain this podcast. And it'd just be great to have that keep growing and have more people joining in and pitching in. Even if it's just a few dollars a month, just for a few months, you just hop in and hop out when you need to. And, you know, if everybody does that, then it will work out. So if you value this as a service to you in the wider virtual reality community, then send me a tip. Go to Patreon.com slash Voices of VR and donate today. Thanks for listening.
