Tech Giants Introduce New Settings for Voice Data Collection

Big tech companies like Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook have faced criticism over their use of human reviewers to analyze voice recordings from their devices. This practice has been met with controversy, as it involves humans listening to users' conversations and commands without their explicit consent.

In an effort to address these concerns, the companies have rolled out new settings that allow users to opt-in or opt-out of this data collection. For example, Google's new audio policy and settings enable users to choose whether human reviewers can listen to their voice recordings captured by Google Assistant. This comes after revelations in July that some Google contractors were listening to and leaking recordings from Google Assistant.

The companies claim that allowing humans to analyze voice recordings helps improve their natural language processing AI by providing more real user data with its matching meaning. However, users can choose to opt-out of this practice if they prefer not to have their conversations and commands reviewed by humans.

For those who want to exercise their data privacy rights, here's a step-by-step guide on how to opt-in or out of voice data collection on Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google devices: