If you’ve ever been absolutely astounded how after a casual phone conversation with a friend about pancakes, your Instagram feed suddenly starts showing you reels of how to cook pancakes and Google begins to display ads for read-to-eat pancake brands, your long-held suspicions have now been confirmed that Big Tech might indeed be somehow listening in to that conversation.

A marketing firm which claims to have Facebook and Google as its clients has privately admitted that it listens to users’ smartphone microphones and then places ads based on the information that is picked up, according to 404 Media.

Cox Media Group, the television and radio news conglomerate, admitted in a pitch deck to investors that its “Active Listening” software uses AI to “capture real-time intent data by listening to our conversations.”

“Advertisers can pair this voice-data with behavioural data to target in-market consumers,” the company wrote in the pitch deck.

CMG added that consumers “leave a data trail based on their conversations and online behaviour” and that the AI-powered software collects and analyses the “behavioural and voice data from 470+ sources.”

The slideshow details the six-step process that CMG’s Active-Listening software uses to collect consumer’s voice data through any microphone-equipped device, including smartphones, laptops or home assistants.

It’s unclear from the slideshow whether the Active-Listening software is eavesdropping constantly, or only at specific times when the phone mic is activated, such as during a call.

In a now deleted Cox blogpost from November 2023, the company seems to have addressed the legal aspects of it, where the post noted, “We know what you’re thinking. Is this even legal? It is legal for phones and devices to listen to you. When a new app download or update prompts consumers with a multi-page term of use agreement somewhere in the fine print, Active Listening is often included.”

Google reportedly removed CMG from its “Partners Program” website after it was contacted by 404 Media regarding the latest revelations.

“All advertisers must comply with all applicable laws and regulations as well as our Google Ads policies, and when we identify ads or advertisers that violate these policies, we will take appropriate action,” a Google spokesperson told The Post.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, said that it was reviewing CMG to see whether it violated any of its terms of service.

“Meta does not use your phone’s microphone for ads and we’ve been public about this for years,” a Meta spokesperson told The Post.

“We are reaching out to CMG to get them to clarify that their program is not based on Meta data.”

While CMG claimed that Amazon too was a client, an Amazon spokesperson told 404 Media that its advertising arm “has never worked with CMG on this program and has no plans to do so.”

Big Tech has long denied that it listens in to conversations. In fact, Meta’s online privacy centre even states, “We understand that sometimes ads can be so specific, it seems like we must be listening to your conversations through your microphone, but we’re not.”

But with firms such as CMG admitting to the contrary, it’s becoming increasingly harder to take their word at face value.