Google says its employees listen
to private audio recordings of customers from Google Home smart speakers — to
improve its voice recognition technology.
The company made the disclosure
on Thursday after some of its Dutch language recordings were leaked and
obtained by VRT, a national public service broadcaster in Belgium.
In a press statement released on
Friday, Google said it employs language experts to analyze and transcribe
snippets of users’ recordings to aid the development of its artificial
intelligence system.
According to the firm, the
results from this AI-oriented analysis are then deployed into its Google Home
smart speakers and the production of Android OS-based smartphones.
“We partner with language experts
around the world to improve speech technology by transcribing a small set of
queries. This work is critical to developing technology that powers products
like the Google Assistant,” the company said.
“Language experts only review
around 0.2% of all audio snippets, and these snippets are not associated with
user accounts as part of the review process.
“Google Assistant begins
recording when prompted by the wake-up phrase ‘OK, Google’. Google’s
contractors are then given access to these recordings to better understand language
patterns and accents”.
A Google spokesperson had claimed
that the recordings were stripped of all information that precisely identifies
users but VRT found they had identifiable information — including addresses and
other personal information.
“This is a critical part of the
process of building speech technology. Our security and privacy response teams
have been activated on this issue, are investigating, and we will take action,”
Google said.
Advertise on NigerianEye.com to reach thousands of our daily users
No comments
Post a Comment
Kindly drop a comment below.
(Comments are moderated. Clean comments will be approved immediately)
Advert Enquires - Reach out to us at NigerianEye@gmail.com