Facebook Inc. is being probed by Hamburg\u2019s data protection authority over transcribing audio from users of its services, adding to an investigation into Google\u2019s automatic speech assistant.<\/p>\n
Facebook “is currently the subject of a separate investigation” into\u00a0transcription\u00a0of human-to-machine and human-to-human communications, the Hamburg Commissioner for Data Protection said in a press release on Monday. “Manual evaluation was used in Facebook Messenger to optimize the transcription function.”<\/p>\n
The social network is facing intense regulatory scrutiny of its businesses in Europe, including an antitrust\u00a0probe\u00a0into its Libra cryptocurrency and numerous privacy\u00a0investigations\u00a0that could lead to hefty fines. Ireland, Facebook\u2019s main privacy watchdog in the EU, has also\u00a0asked\u00a0the company for more information on news it has been paying contractors to transcribe clips of audio from users.<\/p>\n
Facebook declined to immediately comment. Google and the Irish data protection commissioner\u2019s office didn\u2019t respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
The issue of digital assistants and transcription of user commands has dogged several major technology companies. Tech platforms say the human analysis of voice chats helps train and correct mistakes, thereby improving responses to queries by users. But privacy advocates\u00a0worry users\u2019 rights could be breached if terms of service about the practice are unclear or transcription occurs without their knowledge.<\/p>\n
Hamburg has been probing Google over the recordings and the company has already agreed to pause the practice for at least three months. The Alphabet Inc. unit should warn users about the risk of accidental activation of speech recordings and seek consent for transcriptions, the regulator said.<\/p>\n
Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. have also suspended or announced changes to human analysis of user commands, amid increasing global scrutiny by regulators and lawmakers over the privacy implications of the practice. The U.S. Congress is working on a federal privacy bill that could also tackle the handling of voice recordings.<\/p>\n
More recently, Microsoft Corp. was found to\u00a0engage\u00a0in the practice, according to articles by Motherboard, highlighting the importance human review still plays in training machine-learning algorithms.<\/p>\n
Facebook Inc. is being probed by Hamburg\u2019s data protection authority over transcribing audio from users of its services.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":221973,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[15559,161,8887],"class_list":["post-317791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security","tag-anti-trust-probe","tag-facebook","tag-facebook-messenger"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317791"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}