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Google Tightens Up Privacy Controls For Assistant Voice Recordings

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After concern over the way Google handles voice recordings from Google Assistant, the company has announced sweeping changes to its data retention policy.

Earlier this summer, it was revealed that company staff were listening in to, and transcribing, Assistant queries made via Home and other devices. The row has been part of a broader scandal, with Amazon and Apple being similarly called out.

Amazon has already improved its privacy controls and added a feature allowing users to ask for their data to be deleted; Apple has similarly tightened privacy and pledged not to share data with third parties.

It's now Google's turn to don the hair shirt.

"It's clear that we fell short of our high standards in making it easy for you to understand how your data is used, and we apologize," says Google Assistant senior product manager Nino Tasca in a blog post.

The company has already paused its human transcription program, following the launch of an investigation by the German data protection authority - an investigation that looked highly likely to condemn the practice.

However, it is still using human reviewers to listen to audio snippets when users opt in to the Voice & Audio Activity (VAA) setting, and will now make this clearer to users and allow them to opt out. Tasca says the company's also improving the security and privacy protections it uses.

It's also attempting to deal with the problem of unintended activation.

"We understand it’s important to get this right, and will continue to focus on this area, including implementing additional measures to help us better identify unintentional activations and exclude them from the human review process," says Tasca.

"Soon we’ll also add a way to adjust how sensitive your Google Assistant devices are to prompts like “Hey Google,” giving you more control to reduce unintentional activations, or if you’d prefer, make it easier for you to get help in especially noisy environments."

It remains to be seen whether users will actually take advantage of these settings: it seems a fair bet that most will just go along with the default. But the move should at least help Google stave off censure by regulators in Europe and elsewhere.

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