Lesson 135 · 2 min
Voice assistants and your privacy
Smart speakers and phone assistants listen for a wake word, and what you say after it may be stored, so check the history and the mute button.
A voice assistant keeps listening for a short trigger word. After it hears that word, or something that sounds like it, it records your request and usually sends it to the company's servers to be understood.
Those recordings and their text may be kept in your account. Companies say they use them to improve the service, and in some cases staff have reviewed samples.
Most assistants let you review and delete your voice history, set it to delete automatically, and turn off the use of recordings for improvement. Speakers have a mute button for the microphone.
Avoid asking an assistant to handle bank details or passwords, and think twice about putting one in a bedroom or a child's room.
Do it now
Clean up your voice history
- 1. Open the app that controls your speaker or phone assistant.
- 2. Find the voice or activity history and listen to a few recordings.
- 3. Delete what you do not want, and switch on automatic deletion if it is offered.
Quick check
Keep going
Next →Strong passwords and passkeysWords from this lesson
- Speech-to-text
- AI that turns spoken words into written text, as in meeting transcripts and voice typing.
- Data privacy
- Keeping personal or confidential information under control, including deciding what you type into AI tools and where it is stored.
- Edge AI
- AI that runs directly on a phone, camera or other device instead of on distant servers, so data can stay local.