Subcontractors from Microsoft have listened to conversations recorded by Xbox One

Microsoft outsourcers committed to improving the console’s voice analytics capabilities have been listening to private user conversations for five years, a Motherboard survey found.

Confidential sources cited in the survey explained that they had to listen to voice commands triggered by the Xbox or Cortana keywords, but that they were also able to hear private conversations that accidentally imitated the voice assistant.

One of the subcontractors mentioned that most of the voices heard belonged to children, but that the vast majority of the recordings were game related commands, downloadable content purchases, or interface navigation.

Fewer and fewer accidental triggers have occurred as the technology has improved.

Most of the recordings heard by these third parties did not contain sensitive information, but Microsoft said in 2013 that the Kinect, the camera equipped with a microphone that was included with the Xbox One at launch, was thought and designed with strong privacy protections .

We stopped studying the voice content captured by the Xbox for product improvement several months ago because we felt it was no longer needed, and we do not intend to do it again to do so , said Microsoft in a written statement to Motherboard.

This is the second time in a month that Motherboard has released revelations about Microsoft. The American giant also gave access to recordings of Skype and Cortana conversations to subcontractors.

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