Facebook workers listened to Messenger conversations

Hundreds of workers had been paid to transcribe voice recordings of Facebook customers, it has emerged.

Facebook is the most recent firm to verify it has used third-party workers to do such work, following Google, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon.

The observe had been halted “more than a week ago”, Facebook stated.

Workers got audio of individuals’s conversations however weren’t instructed the way it was obtained, in accordance to Bloomberg, which was first to report the information.

Facebook stated the recordings had been being transcribed manually in order that synthetic intelligence techniques used to robotically transcribe conversations might be improved.

It added this had been achieved solely when customers had opted in to transcription providers and given permission for microphone entry.

“Much like Apple and Google, we paused human review of audio more than a week ago,” a spokeswoman stated.

Facebook’s lead supervisory authority on information safety inside the EU is Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner.

“We are now seeking detailed information from Facebook on the processing in question and how Facebook believes that such processing of data is compliant with their GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation] obligations,” a spokeswoman instructed BBC News.

Earlier this month, Apple and Google stated that they had paused the observe of getting workers to pay attention to voice recordings of customers so that they might be transcribed.

Microsoft additionally confirmed voice recordings of customers of Skype’s computerized translation service had been additionally analysed by people.

The information regulator in Luxembourg can be at the moment in discussions with Amazon about its related use of workers to test some Alexa voice recordings.