Well, if we look around, we will find that personal assistants like Alexa, Google Assistant, Cortana, Siri, etc. were the latest trend. These voice assistants are making our life more comfortable. However, they are not as private as everyone thinks.

Lots of silicon valley tech giants have already come forward about their use of human contractors to listen to audio recordings of users. Companies behind these voice assistant services hire human contractors to review the voice clips.

Microsoft Admits Humans Listen to Skype, Cortana Recordings

This thing was done to improve the quality of the voice assistant apps. Google and Apple were already found saving user’s recordings to enhance its AI assistant skills, and the latest one to join the list is Microsoft.

Recently, Microsoft admitted that some humans do listen to Skype and Cortana audio recordings to build, train, and improve the accuracy of their AI Assistant. Microsoft recently updated its Privacy Policy page to reveal the changes.

The updated Privacy Policy Page of Microsoft reads, “Our processing of personal data for these purposes includes both automated and manual methods of processing… To build, train, and improve the accuracy of our automated methods of processing (including AI), we manually review some of the predictions…For example, we manually review short snippets of a small sampling of voice data we have taken steps to de-identify to improve our speech services, such as recognition and translation.”

It’s also worth to note that Microsoft is recording the audio only for the Skype translation, not the Skype audio and video calls. However, Cortana is recording everything, including all your questionable requests.

So, what do you think about this? Share your views with us in the comment box below.