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September 24, 2019 12:22 am

Google Is Reducing How Much Audio It Saves For Human Review

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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