Naver hit for eavesdropping via AI voice assistant
Naver has been hit for letting its contractors listen to voice recordings from its Clova artificial intelligence (AI) voice assistant users in the name of improving service quality.
Against the backlash that this produced over the violation of users’ privacy, Naver said Tuesday that every recording was conducted legally and there should be no concerns about the company invading privacy.
“As we notified customers in the terms and conditions of Clova, we store data to verify and improve service quality and then destroy it,” the company said in a statement.
Amid the growing importance of internet of things (IoT) and AI technologies, Naver launched Clova in May 2017. Users can use the service on their smart devices or Clova-featured AI speakers.
However, the company has been criticized recently for letting its contractors listen to recordings and convert audio into text for a quality review of its AI assistant.
Naver said it was not the only company in Korea enabling its contractors to access the information as Amazon, Google and Apple have done similar things to improve their AI voice assistant platforms.
Apple and Amazon have been criticized for collecting voice recordings even though their users didn’t activate their voice assistants. But Naver said it collected a small portion of voice recordings “when users summoned Clova.”
“Naver didn’t collect any kind of conversations when users didn’t summon the Clova voice assistant,” the company said.
Google and Apple said they suspended their practice of letting contractors listen to recordings of what people said to Google Assistant or Apple Siri. Amazon also enabled its Alexa voice assistant users to choose whether they allow Amazon employees to listen to recordings.
Anh Hye-yeon, president of the Center for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology (WISET) and a professor of cybersecurity at Ewha Womans University, said Naver’s attempt to collect a small portion of recordings to improve the service platform wouldn’t have resulted in any trouble if the firm had notified users of its recording practice and ensured that the data couldn’t be used for other purposes.