ISLAMABAD – In order to improve its speech recognition algorithms, Facebookis now offering to pay some of its users for voice recordings.
According to the Company, the snippets will be used to teach systems usedin devices like its Facebook Portal smart speakers and cameras.
After shutting down its controversial VPN service, Facebook launched itsnew market research app, dubbed the Viewpoints last year. This applicationasks users to fill out surveys and test new products along with a number ofthings. As a return, the users get reward points.
Three months after the launch of the application, Facebook has announcedthat it will pay some users for voice recordings as part of a new programcalled “Pronunciations” in its Viewpoints market research app. Only userswho will qualify to be part of the program will be paid since therecordings are required to help improve the company’s speech recognitiontechnology.
Tech giants like Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft foundthemselves in deep waters last year after they were caught listening to andtranscribing voice recordings so that they could improve speechrecognition. All this was done without informing people.
Read Top Stories
As far as the payment for the recording is concerned, it’s not much. Thequalified people will get $5 for every 1000 points they make. For referencesake, you will have to record 20 voice clips saying ‘hey portal [and yourfriend’s name]’ and then you will get 200 reward points. All this for $1seems pretty taxing.
Apart from this, Facebook claims that the recordings users provide will notbe connected to their public Facebook profiles. Viewpoints and Facebook aretwo different apps that are not correlated.
