It became known that, like other technology companies that have their own voice assistants, Microsoft paid contractors to transcribe the voice recordings of Cortana and Skype users. Apple, Google and Facebook have temporarily suspended the practice, while Amazon allows users to prevent their own voice recordings from being transcribed.
Despite likely privacy concerns, Microsoft intends to continue transcribing user voice messages. The company has changed its privacy policy to make it clear that Microsoft employees listen to user conversations and voice commands to improve the quality of services provided. “We realized, based on the issues recently raised, that we could do a better job of stating explicitly that company employees sometimes listen to this content,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a recent interview when asked about changes to the company's privacy policy.
The updated description of the Microsoft privacy policy states that the processing of user data can take place in automatic and manual modes. It also says that the company is using voice data and user audio recordings to improve speech recognition, translation, intent understanding, and more in Microsoft software products and services.
While Microsoft allows users to delete saved audio recordings through the Privacy Dashboard, the company's policy could have been more transparent from the outset as to what purpose the data is being used for. It is known that Apple plans to provide users with the ability to opt out of recording voice messages recorded by Siri. Whether Microsoft will follow suit remains to be seen.
Source: 3dnews.ru