Does Google Assistant Secretly Record Your Conversations?

In a closed-door hearing with Indian government officials, Google allegedly said that its employees regularly listen to conversations recorded by Google Assistant, reports IndiaToday via Android Authority.

Sources told IndiaToday that these conversations were recorded even when the user did not speak the “Hey Google” trigger.

However, Google reached out to Android Authority and disputed this claim saying that its Google Assistant does not record conversations without the “Hey Google” trigger.

The company pointed to its Safety Center website for details on how its Google Assistant works. Though it doesn’t record entire conversations, the Assistant does record snippets.

On its website, Google confirmed that its Google Assistant remains in standby mode until the owner speaks a keyword like “Hey Google.”

While idle, the phone or tablet device regularly records snippets while scanning for the keywords. When triggered, the Assistant can grab a few seconds of conversation before the Assistant is activated.

Google previously admitted that its employees do listen to “Hey Google” triggered conversations. These recordings are used only to improve Google’s speech recognition technology for various languages.

Google assuaged privacy concerns by confirming that only a tiny portion of the audio recordings are available to employees. Sensitive conversations also are omitted from these employee reviews.