- Microsoft will offer more control to users over their voice data.
- From October 30, the company stopped storing voice clips.
- Users can choose not to contribute their voice clips for review.
Today, Microsoft announced more control over users’ voice data. Consumers will get finer-grain control over whether their data is used to enhance products for speech recognition. The new policy would allow consumers to determine whether reviewers will listen to recordings of what they have said. These include Microsoft employees and contractors. Speech Recognition is used while talking to Microsoft products and services that use voice recognition technology. It includes Microsoft Translator, SwiftKey, Windows, Cortana, HoloLens, Mixed Reality, and Skype Voice Translation.
Microsoft Updates its Privacy Policies
Maintaining privacy when it comes to voice recognition is a difficult task. The state-of-the-art AI techniques can infer from timbre, pitch, and speaker style. The AI can also analyze attributes such as purpose, gender, emotional state, and identity. Unintentional voice assistant activations exposed private conversations, says a report. Recently a study was conducted by Clemson University School of Computing. And the researchers found that privacy policies for Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant voice apps are frequently “problematic.” The voice assistant services often breach baseline requirements as well. Due to this, law firms such as Mishcon de Reya have advised workers to mute smart speakers while talking at home about customer issues.
On October 30, Microsoft stopped storing voice clips processed by its speech recognition technology. Also, users can remove captured data from Google Assistant, Siri, Cortana, Alexa, and other major voice recognition platforms. This, however, required some significant efforts. That’s why Microsoft says it’ll carry out new voice clip review settings across all of its applicable items over the next few months. The company says that consumers can opt-in to study these clips. They can help to enhance the performance of Microsoft’s AI systems.
Users can choose not to share their voice data
Microsoft claims that its voice-enabled products and services will still be able to be used. Clients who chose not to contribute their voice clips for analysis can use it too. However, the company retains the right to continue accessing information related to user voice operations. The company will store the automatically generated transcripts during user experiences with speech recognition AI.
Recent reports revealed the possible abuse of recordings obtained to strengthen assistants. These days Siri and Google Assistant have been the focus of technology giants such as Apple and Google. In April 2019, Bloomberg disclosed that Amazon hires contract workers to annotate thousands of hours of audio from Alexa-powered devices. This led the company to carry out user-facing tools that remove cloud-stored data easily.
