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Google Privacy Technology

Google Is Reducing How Much Audio It Saves For Human Review (theverge.com) 12

Google is making some changes to its audio data retention policies in the coming months. "Most importantly for those concerned about humans reviewers listening to you, it plans on asking every user to re-affirm their choice to opt-in to that program -- which is 'paused globally' pending an EU investigation," reports The Verge. "The company is also making other changes, including a new sensitivity option for 'Hey Google' hotword detection, so that users who want to can make it less likely that their smart speakers will pick up unintended audio." From the report: Google says that having your voice recordings stored and reviewed was always opt-in and that voice recordings that humans reviewed were also always disassociated with user accounts. However, the so-called "Voice & Audio Activity (VAA)" setting wasn't very clear about what was happening when you agreed. Going forward, Google will explicitly mention human review for the VAA setting and, just as importantly, present that new, clearer screen to all Google Assistant users so they can choose if they want to opt-in or not. The company also says that it's going to "vastly reduce the amount of audio data we store," promising to "delete the vast majority of audio data associated with your account that's older than a few months" for people who have opted in to VAA.

Google also made a vague promise to add "an extra layer of privacy filters" to the audio transcription process, which we are told involves filtering out certain classes of audio data. It's not entirely clear what that means, however Google does say it intends on being more aggressive at automatically deleting accidental recordings. Google has a penchant for solving all problems with more settings -- especially with the Google Assistant -- and it's doing it yet again now. Soon it will add a hotword sensitivity option, which means you'll be able to choose how clearly you have to enunciate "Hey Google" in order to turn on the smart speaker. If you are worried about accidental recordings, you'll be able to turn it up, if you're not, you can set it to be a little more forgiving.

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Google Is Reducing How Much Audio It Saves For Human Review

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  • Ain't I great? Applaud me!

    -- G. Oogle, professional cook

  • is necessary to improve both the effectiveness of the service and the quality of the results provided for user queries. It takes humans to consistently assure algorithms are current, relevant and useful. I'm perfectly fine with their use of my data, anonymized for human consumption to improve the utility of the service.

    • Good luck anonymizing 24/7 audio recordings from inside your home.

      Are you on drugs?

      • >> 24/7 audio recordings Have you bothered to look at the network traffic from one of these? If you had, you would see that it does not align with your assertion. Or were you just presenting speculation as truth?
        • Even if part of the original assertion is an exaggeration, the point is correct.

          Google says audio is "disassociated with user accounts", and that is a dodge meant to persuade users that the data is somehow then anonymous.

          It is not, because "disassociated with an account" is a much weaker statement than one like "unable to be associated with an identity." And they cannot promise that.

          Anonymized review is pure fiction, and Google's weasel words are evidence that they know that.

  • Who cares if a human giggles at my audio.

    A much bigger concern is when their AI decides to unfairly categorize me as a terrorist because of my audio.

    [and no - this isn't just a paranoid rant. It's a serious Trump proposal]

    https://www.vanityfair.com/new... [vanityfair.com]

  • Google is quite annoying. I use an Android phone and intentionally never activated Google assistant on purpose. Somehow it found a way to activate. So I turned it off again. If you press the main circular button too long it can activate. Once on it stays open unless you manually turn it off. I once went into my google history and found hundreds of snippets of my life just randomly uploaded from accidental presses of the button during normal use of the phone.

    And I'm not even going to get into the trouble you

  • No one actually believes this, do they? Big Brother Google is always listening, always watching. No way they plan to change.

    Stop Google now, before it's too late.

  • Audio is better evaluated by re-'listening' to it instead of re-'viewing' it.

"Show me a good loser, and I'll show you a loser." -- Vince Lombardi, football coach

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