Facebook admits listening in, transcribing users’ conversations

The tech giant acknowledged the transcriptions in a statement, saying that they were made with users’ permission and have now been stopped
It had hired hundreds of contractors to listen to users’ audio, so that it could test the ability of its artificial intelligence to interpret messages

Facebook

Agence France-Presse

Published: 9:07am, 14 Aug 2019

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Facebook has paid hundreds of contractors to listen to and transcribe snippets of users’ conversations, US media reported on Tuesday, amid heightened scrutiny of the social network’s data collection practices.

The company acknowledged the transcriptions, which were first reported by Bloomberg, telling the news agency in a statement that they were made with users’ permission, but that the practice has nonetheless been stopped.

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“Much like Apple and Google, we paused human review of audio more than a week ago,” the company said.

The contractors were testing the ability of the social network’s artificial intelligence to interpret messages, and the only users affected were those on Facebook Messenger app who had opted to have their voice chats transcribed.

Bloomberg said the contractors working on the project were “rattled” by listening to private audio whose origin was not disclosed and which sometimes contained vulgar content.

Amazon gives users the option of blocking the collection of their voice by Alexa, the company’s ‘personal assistant’. Photo: Reuters

The contractors also were not told the reason they were doing the transcribing, the news agency reported.

Amazon, Apple and Google – all companies offering voice assistants – have previously acknowledged collecting conversations for the purpose of improving their products.

Apple and Google have in recent weeks said they’ve halted the practice, while Amazon gives users the option of blocking the collection of their voice by Alexa, the artificial intelligence driving their Echo voice assistant.

Facebook, which just settled a record US$5 billion fine with the US Federal Trade Commission for misusing users’ private data, has given differing responses to reports that it uses audio recordings to better target ads or make its pages more attractive.

“You’re talking about this conspiracy theory that gets passed around that we listen to what’s going on on your microphone and use that for ads,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in US Senate testimony last year. “We don’t do that.”

But the company later told lawmakers in writing that it does actually collect conversations if users have specifically allowed it to do so and are using certain audio features.

The company did not specify what it did with the audio afterwards.

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