It’s happened again – a seemingly major technological snafu on the part of Google. This time it seems the tech giant’s smart speakers were giving out transcripts of users’ utterances without their permission, according to a report from BuzzFeed News.
The report says that users of Google’s Nest Home and Nest Mini speakers were receiving transcripts of their conversations via email from the company. The emails were supposedly intended to help Google improve its accuracy of voice responses, but they included private conversations that had nothing to do with voice commands.
Google, which has been trying to capitalize on voice assistance services such as its own Google Assistant, Apple’s Siri, and Amazon’s Alexa, has apologized for the issue and says it is “taking steps” to address it. The company said that it was a “mistake” and that it “understands the concern” of users whose privacy may have been violated.
Some experts are now wondering if this could potentially spark a scandal for the search engine giant, similar to the Google+ data leak that rocked the company in 2018. Google+ was the social network component of Google’s suite of services, and it was ultimately shut down due to problems with user privacy.
There are also questions about how this incident might affect the trustworthiness of smart devices. As these technologies become increasingly pervasive in our homes and lives, critics are beginning to wonder if we’re getting too comfortable with potentially intrusive AI. After all, if a device like Google’s can make mistakes like this, then what could other AI-powered devices be capable of?
While Google has said that it is taking steps to address the issue and prevent a similar incident in the future, it’s clear that users of smart devices need to be more vigilant about the privacy and security of the information they share. It’s also important to consider that, as technology progresses, these types of data breaches can and will continue to occur – as will the tech giant’s efforts to address them.