Google said it was conducting an internal review after it discovered confidential audio had been leaked by a contractor of private conversations with its digital assistant.
The U.S. internet giant acknowledged “misconduct” in the leak of the Dutch language conversations by one of its language experts contracted to help refine its Google Assistant, the artificial intelligence-powered system for voice interactions.
Google made the announcement on Thursday following a report by Belgian broadcaster VRT that it could access fragments of conversations from smart speakers and other Google devices in Belgium and Netherlands.
The leak appeared to be from one of the language experts Google uses to help it refine its program. “We just learned that one of these language reviewers has violated our data security policies by leaking confidential Dutch audio data,” Google product manager David Monsees said in a blog post.
“Our security and privacy response teams have been activated on this issue, are investigating, and we will take action. We are conducting a full review of our safeguards.”
