Microsoft contractors are listening to some Skype translation calls: Report

Motherboard has collected documentation showing that human contractors are listening to some translated phone calls that Skype is translating. This is surprising and alarming to some who thought Microsoft was doing this using artificial intelligence without human intervention.

Microsoft-employed contractors also are listening to some voice commands that people use to communicate with Microsoft's Cortana personal digital assistant, Motherboard also said.

Microsoft isn't the only company that's been found to use humans to do these kinds of tasks. Apple and Google recently ceased using humans to listen in on Siri and Google Assistant service conversations. 

Microsoft officials told Motherboard that the company believes its Skype Translator and Cortana documentation are "clear in that the company uses voice data to improve their services." Like officials say in regards to privacy in general, Microsoft says it takes steps to remove identifying information when collecting this data. I've asked the company if there's anything else they'd like to add to this. No word back yet.

I'm in the camp of people who assume we've traded our privacy for convenience when it comes to mobile and voice-related technologies and we're unlikely to ever get it back as long as we use these kinds of technologies. That's why I'm neither surprised nor outraged by this latest report, even though Microsoft's Skype Translator site never explicitly says that humans may collect and/or listen to conversations as part of "helping improve Microsoft products and services."

Before 2015, Skype Translator was a standalone app. But starting in 2015, Microsoft began integrating Skype translation technology into the version of Skype that worked on Windows 7, 8 and 10 PCs.

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