Bad enough Microsoft was listening to people through Windows based software, now they are doing it on their own Xbox hardware as well.
Microsoft did indeed have humans listen in on the occasional Xbox voice commands, according to a new report. This was done to improve the voice recognition software in Microsoft products, but sometimes this practice led to some game-specific recordings contractors would need to sift through.
Contractors who worked at Microsoft to listen to audio recorded from voice recognition and AI software revealed that this included audio from Xbox consoles. Audio from Xbox was collected from both the Kinect and later when Xbox integrated Microsoft’s Cortana AI.
“The Xbox stuff was actually a bit of welcome respite, honestly,” one anonymous Microsoft contractor told Motherboard. “It was frequently the same games. Same DLCs. Same type of commands." These commands were apparently requests like, “‘Xbox give me all the games for free’ or ‘Xbox download [newest Minecraft skins pack]’ or whatever.” Contractors were paid $10 and hour for this work.
Microsoft did indeed have humans listen in on the occasional Xbox voice commands, according to a new report. This was done to improve the voice recognition software in Microsoft products, but sometimes this practice led to some game-specific recordings contractors would need to sift through.
Contractors who worked at Microsoft to listen to audio recorded from voice recognition and AI software revealed that this included audio from Xbox consoles. Audio from Xbox was collected from both the Kinect and later when Xbox integrated Microsoft’s Cortana AI.
“The Xbox stuff was actually a bit of welcome respite, honestly,” one anonymous Microsoft contractor told Motherboard. “It was frequently the same games. Same DLCs. Same type of commands." These commands were apparently requests like, “‘Xbox give me all the games for free’ or ‘Xbox download [newest Minecraft skins pack]’ or whatever.” Contractors were paid $10 and hour for this work.