Take Back Control: User Privacy and Transparency Concerns in Personalized Conversational Agents

We reflect on user privacy concerns, transparency and informed consent for long-term interactions with personalized conversational agents. We argue that the common practice of asking users to sign an informed consent form is insufficient to accommodate the privacy concerns of the user. We propose that long-term engaging personalized conversational agents must include an explicit mechanism in their conversations to allow users to have better control over their stored personal information and to have transparency about who is allowed to view the stored personal information.