Voice search is the new technology that many of us are using. Google adds this to its browsing homepage with the mindset that this can allow you to go for a hands free search. But do you know that this voice search option is now under controversy?
Recently some open source developers have come up with this complain that Google Chrome has secretly installed ‘audio-snooping code’ on the computer that is capable of listening to whatever is being spoken in front of the microphone.
Mainly, this code was developed to support the ‘OK Google’ feature according to which Google can listen and respond to you as per hotword detection. But now an opposite thing has come up where complains are coming of this code being automatically installed on the computers.
The open source developer has showed this worry that this can be a trouble for them as because the code can secretly send the conversations to some other competitor sitting abroad. This is because Google has installed a Black Box of code without the user’s consent. This Black Box turns on the microphone of the computer and can actively listen and record to whatever is going on in the room.
To all these complains, Google has responded and have mentioned that the hotword module is downloaded in the startup surely but it cannot go active without the user’s consent. But when the complains have not stopped, then after research Google has blamed Linux and Chromium for the fault.
Google has also made this clear that Chromium is not a Google product and Google also does not take responsibility of its guarantee. But this is not possible that the Black Box can go active automatically. This can be an accidental activation process.
On this reply, some of the developers have put up an advice that the microphone of the computer should have a hardware switch to put it on and off. This should be done so that the module can be used only when it is required and such risks of automatic activation can be skipped.
Google is presently researching on it so that it can prove this fact that while voice searches are going on, no such recording is done and no one else can listen to it until and unless the user wants it to be. And the most importantly, it is a feature that one can only use if the user opts for it.
