Facebook will pay for users’ voice recordings

Facebook will pay for users’ voice recordings after it was caught listening to and transcribing private Messenger chats to improve its speech recognition software. Facebook says it will start paying users to harvest their voice data for training speech recognition software after it was caught analyzing their speech without permission last year.

In a program called ‘Pronunciations’, participants will be payed a small sum, only up to $5, to use the company’s market research app Viewpoints for recording various words and phrases that the company will then leverage to train its speech recognition AI. That voice data will be used to improve products like Portal, which is Facebook’s smart display that can be used for video-calling among other things and can be activated with one’s voice.

In the programme, participants, who must be at least 18-years-old, will have to utter specific phrases like ‘Hey Portal’ and also say the first names of 10 of their friends on Facebook.

For each ‘set’ of prompts participants will receive 200 points. They are able to cash out once point totals reach 1,000 and $5 will be paid via PayPal.

Facebook says that the company won’t link voice recordings with participants’ Facebook accounts or names and that the data will be used anonymously.

It also says that it won’t share the data with other parties, including its other services, without user permission.

The program marks a departure from previous practices from Facebook which was caught harvesting and listening to voice recordings of users without their express permission this past summer.

Specifically, Facebook was paying third-party contractors to listen in on voice commands and check whether its artificial intelligence correctly interpreted the messages.

A string of reports last year revealed that Facebook was just one of many major tech companies engaging in that practice.

Among the other devices found to be recording users were Apple’s Homepod, Amazon’s wildly popular smart speaker, Alexa, the Google Home, and devices using Microsoft’s Cortana assistant.

Devices capturing audio snippets regularly harvested data that most might consider private, including sex, private conversations, business, and even medical information according to reports from whistle blowers.

Courtesy Daily Mail