Google has become one of the companies using customers’ voice recordings to enhance its smart home products.
The company reportedly scrape up private conversations in the process.
A leak from one of the employees forced Google to admit that it allows workers to access audio recordings from Android smart speakers and Google Home.
Google said it provides those recordings to language experts who then review the snippets, studying customers’ speech to enhance its voice-activated Google Assistant.
Even though the company only reviews a small number of audio recordings from users (0.2 percent of the snippets are reviewed by employees), the practice has scraped up some personal details in the process.
Some of the recordings were taken even when the user doesn’t say the product’s wake up words ‘Hey, Google’ or ‘Ok, Google.’
According to VRT NWW, which checked over 1,000 recordings leaked by an employee, more than 150 of the excerpts were taken without the wake-up command.
The outlet said that recordings included arguments, conversations between a parent and their child, and a phone call that contained private information.
Other cases included a woman who was in distress and a man asking private questions.
Instead of a name, the snippets are given a serial number but information in the recordings may still be identifiable.
It is not clear how the audio was recorded but VRT said that sometimes users may accidentally press a button or the product can mistake user’s speech for a wake-up command.
The company admitted in a statement that a small number of anonymous recordings were transcribed by language experts. It revealed that an investigation had been launched after a Dutch audio data had been leaked.
“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,” Google stated.
“We just learned that one of these reviewers has violated our data security policies by leaking confidential Dutch audio data.”
The company is conducting an investigation on the violator and says it will ensure that no audio is leaked in the future.
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