Apple, Google, and Amazon used human workers to listen to users' voice clips for improving their voice recognition technology, but this allows them to unwittingly access users' private conversations through smartwatches, smartphones, and speakers when the virtual assistant is wrongly activated. Apple and Google have halted the practice, while Amazon offers an opt-out option to users. The long-term solution should be to require users' opt-in approval and disconnect the clips from the user accounts, such as by modifying the recordings before human review. Clients making smart consumer devices should see that voice data will be less available and should seek partners with either novel models that require less data or existing trained models.
by Jerrold Wang
Apple, Google, and Amazon used human workers to listen to users' voice clips for improving their voice recognition technology, but this allows them to unwittingly access users' private conversations through smartwatches, smartphones, and speakers when the virtual assistant is wrongly activated. Apple and Google have halted the practice, while Amazon offers an opt-out option to users. The long-term solution should be to require users' opt-in approval and disconnect the clips from the user accounts, such as by modifying the recordings before human review. Clients making smart consumer devices should see that voice data will be less available and should seek partners with either novel models that require less data or existing trained models.
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