Google Assistant will listen to your conversations again, but ask first

Google workers will listen to audio snippets of people speaking to its digital voice assistant to help improve the product’s quality — if users give the company permission to do so.

Alphabet’s Google paused all human review of assistant audio in July after a Dutch contractor leaked some clips to a journalist, who was then able to identify specific people on the recordings. On Monday, Google said it’s bringing back human reviewers, but adding a new set of precautions to protect customers’ privacy.

Google and other companies like Amazon.com use human transcription to check machine translators and make them smarter. The practice is widespread, but has made some users nervous that giant corporations are monitoring them. The companies maintain that audio snippets aren’t linked to personally identifiable information.