MOUNTAIN VIEW, Sept 24 — In addition to apologising for invading user privacy by listening in on private audio recordings “to help improve speech technology for different languages,” Google announced yesterday that the company is making some changes regarding the development of the Assistant's technology to better protect their customers' privacy.
Earlier this year, it was discovered that Google contractors have been listening to private, Google Assistant-recorded conversations. Yesterday, the company apologised for the scandal and outlined the changes that will be implemented to protect confidential user information.
After pausing the process of human transcription in July when concerns were raised, the company will soon restart the process with a few modifications in place.
While the company's devices have never saved recordings by default, allowing the Assistant to do so “helps the Assistant better recognise your voice over time, and also helps improve the Assistant for everyone by allowing us to use small samples of audio to understand more languages and accents,” as stated by Google.
In the near future, the company will explicitly state that when you opt-in to have your recordings saved, a human may review them to better the speech technology. Those who are already opted into to the process will be able to review their selection.
Additionally, the company stated that it is adding more privacy filters to sift through recordings to ensure that the humans listening do not hear any private information like names or addresses.
Google will also be designating additional time to improving Assistant activation: “Soon we'll also add a way to adjust how sensitive your Google Assistant devices are to prompts like 'Hey Google,' giving you more control to reduce unintentional activations.”
These changes will be rolling out this year, though Google neglected to disclose the exact dates. — AFP-Relaxnews
