Will Google’s Personal Assistant Be Creepy or Cool?

By JENNA WORTHAM

One day, people won’t have to type queries into a box to search for information. It’ll be delivered to them, via their various screens, based on where they are, who is nearby and what they might like and need to know.

Google gave a glimpse of that future on Wednesday at its developer conference in a feature called Google Now, which will act as a kind of automated personal assistant on Android smartphones. The service, which will roll out as part of the next update to Google’s mobile operating system, will do things like remind an Android owner of a lunch date — but also who it is with, how to get there and when to leave, based on current traffic congestion. And based on your past Google searches, it will keep you up to date on flight information and sports scores.

It’s easy to see how this kind of service could be helpful. It’s also really easy to see how it could be creepy. What’s harder, however, is to see the line between the two, and to know where (and when) Google might cross it.

In robotics and computer graphics, there is a concept known as the uncanny valley. Humans tend to find robots and animated characters that look vaguely human-ish charming and cute. But as those bots and figures take on more and more human characteristics, particularly movement, that empathy disappears and is replaced by revulsion — unless the simulation is nearly perfect. It’s one of the theories behind why moviegoers hated the jerky humans in the film “The Polar Express” but loved the bumbling, junk-collecting machine in “Wall-E.”

Is there also an uncanny valley that applies to our level of comfort and discomfort around what companies, services, virtual helpers and machines know about us and how they use that information?

The features that Google Now offers are mostly already available in some form or another, through third-party mobile apps and services. But it gets weird when Google starts to extend its reach into that territory, because Google already knows so much about us — things like who we e-mail and talk to the most, along with what we search for. When those smaller bits of data begin to get linked together in a more meaningful way, that knowledge can take on a larger, different context. A standalone app that pings you to let you know when friends are nearby might feel like a friendly little helper. Google doing it might feel like a menacing stalker. In addition, a service like Google Now may also cause people to realize exactly how much data and information Google actually has about their routines and daily lives. And that might cause some people to be very, very uncomfortable, regardless of how useful the service is.

Carolina Milanesi, an analyst at Gartner, said that the key to not freaking people out, as happened with Google Buzz, was to give users more control.

“Can I let Google Now know only what I want it to know?” she said. “Considering how other Google services work, I doubt there will be much user control.”

It’s not just Google: Facebook appears to be testing out a feature that lets you know when your friends are nearby as well.

The truth is that we don’t know how any of this will play out. We won’t know if it makes us uneasy until it’s available on our devices. We’re at the beginning of an era, the adolescence, of just beginning to understand what information we want to share and keep private, and when we don’t have a say in the matter. But we’re learning that our data exhaust, the small particulate matter that we deposit around the Web and world through our browsers and mobile devices, is becoming a very powerful tool in aggregate, and that large companies are hoping to use it to their advantage.