Facebook pays users for their voice recordings to improve speech recognition tech

After it was caught in the act of secretly transcribing voice recordings without user consent, Facebook is officially upgrading its speech recognition technology and will start paying users for their voice recordings, writes the Verge.

The social network announced it was starting a program called “Pronunciations” within Viewpoints, its market research app launched in 2019. People who are accepted in the program will have to record the phrase “Hey Portal” and the names of 10 friends in their list, twice.

For one set of recordings, users will receive 200 points in the app and once they reach a minimum of 1,000 points, they can cash it out to $5 via PayPal. Users can submit no more than five sets, which will help them get the 1,000 points necessary to get the $5.

Facebook assures users the voice recordings will not be linked to their profiles and the activity will not be shared without asking for their consent in advance.

The company was found last year to be paying hundreds of contractors to listen in to audio recordings from users and transcribe them to check the accuracy of its AI transcription service.

Users based in the U.S., who are at least 18 and have a minimum of 75 friends can join the new program, but it will not be available to a large user pool at first.

After Facebook agreed to settle a biometric face-tagging suit for $550 million for not meeting consent requirements, the judge has questioned the adequacy of the settlement.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  dataset  |  Facebook  |  speech recognition  |  training  |  voice biometrics