Google has admitted that its employees listen to private recordings of customer conversations through Google Assistant , just as it has already happened with Amazon Alexa.
Google has defended its practice of allowing workers to listen to customer audio recordings from their Google Home smart speakers. Language experts analyze the “snippets” of the recordings, claiming that it helps improve their artificial intelligence speech recognition systems.
Google, states in its official blog, defends this practice and that its language analysts only review about 0.2% of audio recordings. However, he also revealed that some of these recordings had been leaked by a worker in the Netherlands.
This situation has led many people to question through social media exactly what information smart speakers like the Google Home and Amazon Echo collect.
What recordings does Google listen to?
Google explained on its blog that the Google Assistant only sends the audio to Google after a device detects the words “wake up” that indicate that a person is interacting with the Assistant, for example saying “Hello Google” or physically activating. the Google Assistant.
However, according to the company, the voice assistant is sometimes activated by accident and the recordings can be sent to workers for analysis ; that is, employees can access conversations that were not intended to be recorded. This means that the smart speaker can record private conversations and intimate moments and then send them to Google reviewers without the user noticing. Each reviewer listens to some 5,000 recordings a week that, moreover, are not even Google employees, but rather freelancers or hired for work and services by a third party.
This is also the case with accidental interactions with Amazon’s voice assistant, Alexa, which shares snippets of conversations with language analysts to improve the “customer experience.”
Could our private conversations leak?
Both Amazon and Google say the recordings are sent anonymously before being sent to analysts. There is no evidence that any Amazon Echo recording has been leaked, and regarding Google, it is the first time that an incident of this type has been publicly recognized.
Google claimed to be investigating what happened, although it is not yet clear what changes, if any, will take place.
“Our Security and Privacy Response teams have been activated, they are investigating and we will take action,” Google wrote on the blog, regarding the leaked recordings in the Netherlands. “We are conducting a full review of our safeguards in this space to prevent misconduct like this from happening again.”
Can we prevent them from eavesdropping on private conversations?
Smart speakers must always be listening for them to work, as they constantly listen face-to-face for the word or command that wakes them up. This does not mean that they are always recording, although an always-on microphone is a tempting target for hackers.
Both Amazon and Google say they employ the highest security standards to prevent third parties from eavesdropping , although as recent revelations from Google show, this does not prevent employees from listening to and sharing recordings.
“We commit to high standards of privacy and security in product development, and we hold our customers to the same standards,” Google said.
“We also provide you with tools to manage and control the data stored in your account. You can disable the storage of audio data in your Google account entirely, or choose to automatically delete the data after every 3 months or 18 months. “
Google Home users can configure their settings on their account page, while Amazon Echo users can review their settings by visiting the Alexa privacy section.
If you ask, in principle, this practice is legal.
