Google’s voice assistant records voice commands and transmits them to third-party companies whose operators transcribe the lyrics. For Google, it’s about improving the voice recognition system. Personal data would not be associated with these audio samples.
After the case of the large ears of Alexa, it’s time for Google to get caught for the indiscretion of his personal assistant. It is a Belgian-Dutch private television channel that lifted the hare by recovering initially a dozen recordings from the assistant, sent by an employee of a subcontractor of Google.
The media then collected more than a thousand additional audio samples. The employee pitcher warning explained that these are human operators from third party companies who listen to the sound samples recorded by the servers of the connected speakers of the brand and android smartphones. According to the informant, the company is paid a few cents per sample to transcribe what the operator has heard.
Intimate conversations collected
While most of the samples involve totally benign voice commands, such as alarm programming, entertaining questions, or opening hours, others are much more troublesome. More worryingly, some samples do not involve voice commands at all. The whistleblower claims to have listened to intimate conversations.
Just as Amazon had explained in his defense, for Google, working with human operators to transcribe interactions with the voice assistant can improve it. The internet giant explained that these transcripts only about 0.2% of all audio samples and are not linked to any personal data. The firm claims that it is actively investigating the case in question and considers that the disclosure of these samples is a violation of its privacy policy.