[wdewind]

My point is that the analysis of this data is not particularly cost prohibitive. If you want to take all the emails you have recorded and figure out if people are talking about unions you really really do not need something like Watson to do it. I'm not saying people are or are not recording this data, I'm saying they don't have an interest in really digging through it, and if they did they would without something like Watson.

TLDR: Watson has nothing to do with monitoring + retention.

[incision]

>'My point is that the analysis of this data is not particularly cost prohibitive. If you want to take all the emails you have recorded and figure out if people are talking about unions you really really do not need something like Watson to do it.'

Clearly, but for whatever reason you've decided that 'email' alone is relevant here, not the bits 'speech and context recognition' and 'parse conversations recorded by their desktops and phones' which are the obvious applications of something like Watson.

>'I'm saying they don't have an interest in really digging through it.'

My direct experience says you are simply uninformed about this.

>'if they did they would without something like Watson.'

Only in the context of the 'emails' strawman you've constructed above.

TLDR: You are missing or deliberately avoiding the point. Voice recording and analysis is already big business, but speech and speaker recognition are still lacking and context awareness is obviously dependent on both. That is the exactly the sort of thing that this article specifically demonstrates Watson as being excellent at.

[wdewind]

Why would people who are actively digging through phone calls not be digging through the relative low hanging fruit of emails? I'm thus using lack of interest in digging through emails as a proxy for lack of interest in this kind of analysis - is that unreasonable?

Edit: And to be clear: I'm not saying there isn't a market for this product, just that the concept that it would become the dystopian norm is a bit melodramatic.