Judging Alexa - Towards a New Methodology to Capture the Legal Compatibility of Conversational Speech Agents

Higher legal standards with regards to data protection of individuals such as EU-GDPR are increasing the pressure on developers of IT artifacts. This is especially prevalent when considering conversational speech agents (CSA) that are collecting data in new ways, and thus, are oftentimes producing conflicts with existing law regulations. For this purpose, we introduce the law simulation method which is a well-known evaluation method among law researchers for capturing legal compatibility of IT artifacts such as CSA. With this rigorous method, we are able to derive actionable guidance for CSA developers to evaluate developer efforts for increasing legal compatibility. To illustrate our methodological approach, we describe in this workshop paper key steps of the method with respect to the evaluation of CSA. We discuss how this can serve as the foundation for a new evaluation method of legally compatible systems in information systems.