Executive Summary
In this essay, I will mention Voice Assistants (VA) which are the most used Artificial Intelligence (AI), and look at how the leak of audio recordings recorded by the Google Assistant created a rift and forced Google to take a step back in its human review process. I will also try to analyze the situation and mention my views on this breach.
Introduction
We live in the digital age and are surrounded by Artificial Intelligence which plays a very important role in our daily lives, and there are many people who love to interact with technology and our search behaviors are already being influenced by our voice recognition. There are different varieties of Artificial Intelligence being developed in the world by various companies and one of the most popular and frequently used Artificial Intelligence (AI) is Voice Assistants (VA). Voice Recognition has become a new method to engage with the customers and companies like Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft know that there is a huge opportunity for marketers (Platz, 2017).
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I believe that the traditional way of using technology where you had to do everything physically is diminishing, and new and updated technology is taking its place. The voice assistants just need to hear the catchphrase assigned to them before they respond to you like ‘OK Google’ for Google assistants. But how do they know that we said something to command them? The only possibility is that we are always being listened to by AI technology. It starts recording as soon as you say its name or when it makes a mistake and thinks that it has detected its wake-up phrase. And, recently there was a privacy breach at Google where the audio recordings were leaked, and it created havoc in the digital environment.
Further on, I will try to explain the reasons behind this privacy breach and what Google is doing to rectify the mistake. Also, I will look at its Regulatory impact and ethical considerations.
Google Assistant- Privacy Backlash
Impact on the organization and steps taken by the company after backlash
Google Assistant is considered one of the major players in the world of Artificial Intelligence Voice Assistants. It “offers voice commands, voice searching, and voice-activated device control” when you say catchphrase words like “OK Google” or “Hey Google” and you can order various tasks to it. The main aim of Google Assistant is to give you a conversational experience (Tillman and O’Boyle, 2019). Google team keeps advancing it as it acts as a handy tool for people in their day-to-day life. People can ask different questions like ‘What is the temperature?’ and it will answer you with the correct temperature of that day, and you don’t even have to type it in or open the weather app or even go out and check it for yourself. The Google search engine keeps the data of our searches and other activities in order to recommend us new content and Google believes that it will have less information about us if we delete the recordings and it might not give us a satisfactory response (O’Boyle. 2019).
Any privacy breach in the world of technology is hard to contemplate for the company as it has a fear of losing the trust of its users/customers. If people lose their trust and faith, they will never want to use that product or service which also affects the goodwill of the company. Recently, Google Assistant faced something like this as one of their contractors, who was hired as the ‘language reviewer’ to understand the language and the accent used in those recordings, in the Netherlands leaked the private and sensitive audio files to a Belgian news outlet VRT NWS. According to the report, 1000 audio recordings were leaked which contained sensitive private data, confidential business calls, domestic violence, etc., and out of these recordings, 153 of the recordings were never supposed to be recorded as the wake-up word for the Google assistant was never said (Riley, 2019). Google didn’t deny the report and David Monsees (2019), product manager for search quoted that “we are conducting a full review of our safeguards in this space to prevent misconduct like this from happening again”. Google also says that the audio files sent for human evaluation were for the purpose of improving speech technology for various languages around the world (Tasca, 2019).
Privacy has become a really big issue as there is nothing called privacy in this digital era. Social media companies have our data which they can use anytime they want; in any way, they see fit, and human contractors listening to our private audio files is just one aspect of it. This security breach should act like a reminder (or a wakeup call) for the people to recognize the fact that everything that is being said to the Google Assistant is being recorded and stored, and it can be used anytime and is always at the risk of being leaked to the news agencies, hackers or the government. Additionally, the breach of security results in incurring costs by the company as they have to start the investigation, enhance their security, and also have to pay for the lawsuits, along with losing clients' trust and damage to the reputation.
It is important for companies to keep their user’s data safe but in case there is a breach of security, they should take necessary steps so that people don’t boycott them. After its security breach, Google Assistant also took various steps to ensure they still have people’s trust. It paused the review of audio recordings by humans worldwide and announced new privacy settings for Google Assistant (Newman, 2019). Google knows that it failed to make people understand why their data is being collected and how it is being used, and to rectify its error, it is now giving more options to its users so that they know how and why their data is being used and giving them the options to choose which people think are right for them. The new privacy control introduced after the public outcry also clearly mentions the fact that human reviewers may listen to audio. Also, Google has promised more transparency and assured that the users can control their privacy preferences for their audio and can also delete a recording if they want to. It also said that it will reduce the data stored for the audio recordings by automatically deleting it after a few months of storage.
Impact on the Individual and Ethical Implications and Regulatory Impact
It is hard for an individual to process the fact that their audio data is being heard by human reviewers. The terms and conditions of Google mention that the audio is being recorded when we activate Google Assistant but it being listened to by human reviewers wasn’t mentioned anywhere which also comes under Ethical implications. Also, Google argues that out of all audio snippets available with Google, it only reviews 0.2% of the data, and the data which is directed directly towards Google is reviewed and not the background voices or conversations (Riley, 2019). I think it is also a violation of trust and ethical principles with the breach of law and regulations when your secured private data is shared with someone else without your knowledge. It also is a threat to an individual’s security.
In the aftermath of the privacy breach (HmbBfDI, 2019), Google was informed by the Hamburg data protection authority of its intentions to begin an ‘urgency procedure’ by using Article 66 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to stop the data processing if it believes that the rights and freedom of the subjects in that data are under threat and needs protection. On July 26, 2019, Google assured the DPA that it has already suspended the human review of audio recordings in Europe. The breach was informed to the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) and they were investigating the situation. An Article 33 breach was also filed, and the processing was suspended for a period of three months. Also, the Hamburg DPA is concerned about Google Assistant complying with EU data protection law.
The Hamburg Commissioner for data protection, Johannes Caspar (HmbBfDI, 2019), said that “the use of language assistance systems in the EU must comply with the data protection requirements of the GDPR. In the case of the Google Assistant, there are currently significant doubts. The use of language assistance systems must be done in a transparent way so that informed consent of the users is possible. In particular, this involves providing sufficient information and transparently informing those concerned about the processing of voice commands, but also about the frequency and risks of mal activation. Finally, due regard must be given to the need to protect third parties affected by the recordings. First of all, further questions about the functioning of the speech analysis system have to be clarified. The data protection authorities will then have to decide on definitive measures that are necessary for a privacy-compliant operation”.
Conclusion
As a result of so many issues faced by the company, Google has said that it will delete the majority of data even if the user has given his/her consent to use the audio recording for improvement purposes after a few months and will not keep the audio data forever (Newman, 2019). But the user should be aware that it is still being recorded and still being stored and humans are still going to listen to it and there is still a chance of the audio files getting leaked. The information technology giants need to improve their data privacy protection standards as they are under the pressure of facing new risks related to technology and in case of privacy infringement, the media covers it on a vast scale. Also, all the employees in the company become accountable for the protection of data with an established code of conduct. The breach in the Google Assistant should never be forgotten so that we never take our data casually and are always aware of how, where, and why it is being used.
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