Yahoo Finance Facebook Portal security concerns laid bare as company admits humans can listen in
Facebook's Portal smart home device is finally launching in the UK – but a human contractor might end up listening to your voice commands.
The device, whose AI-equipped camera will follow users around the room in order to keep them in the frame during video calls, will be available to British consumers for the first time from October 15.
Users will be able to make voice calls using Facebook Messenger and encrypted voice calls using WhatsApp, as well as watch Facebook's TV service in tandem with their friends.
But Facebook admits up front that clips of the instructions given to Portal's voice assistant might be passed to human contractors to check whether they have been correctly interpreted by its speech recognition software – unless users explicitly opt out.
Andrew Bosworth, Facebook's vice president of augmented and virtual reality, said that Portal would never record the content of anyone's video calls, and that its "smart camera" software remains entirely on the device without any data being sent back to Facebook.
"Getting the right people to help review voice transcripts makes the service a lot better," said Mr Bosworth.
"It makes it more inclusive. People have subtly different accents; people have slightly different word usage or might not have access to a technology that you and I might take for granted.
"There are vendors who are really specialised with this and who are really good at this... we're happy to use them. They're under very strict protocols in terms of how we engage with them.
"But we also use full-time employees when appropriate."
Option to block
Users will be able to block Portal from recording any voice commands or taking any transcript using a tickbox in the device's privacy settings, as well as being able to delete recordings individually.
Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple have all recently been revealed to be have humans listening to users' voice clips without mentioning it explicitly in their privacy policies in order to train their speech recognition systems.
Facebook was forced to "pause" the practice in its Messenger app only last month, while Apple announced that it would only listen to audio from users who had explicitly opted in and that only employees, and not contractors, would have access.
Like other smart home devices, Portal is always listening out for its "wake word", continually recording and then deleting what it hears.
When it does hear the wake word, the following voice command is transcribed and sent to Facebook to deliver an answer.
In the past, some smart home devices have misinterpreted random sounds or speech as their wake word, causing private conversations, or even sexual activity, to be inadvertently recorded.
All versions of the device contain a "smart camera", which is able to zoom and pan around a room to follow the user in a manner eerily reminiscent of a skilled cinematographer (Facebook says its engineers were advised by an Oscar-winning cinematographer).
It also features a children's storybook app which allows parents to read their children a bedtime story over the internet using a teleprompter-like interface.
All Portals will include some form of physical plastic cover which can be placed over the camera and also allow the microphone to be switched off.
Data parameters
Mr Bosworth said that Facebook would collect the same data from people using its apps on Portal as it would from any other device.
That would mean that calling someone via Messenger would help Facebook assess how close you are to that person, whereas on WhatsApp no data about who you call or how frequently would be collected.
The basic version of Portal will cost £169 in the UK, while the larger Portal Plus will cost £269 and the smaller Portal Mini will cost £129.
Portal TV, a version which plugs into TVs using their HDMI sockets and uses their screens as its interface, will cost £149.
The devices will be available by mail order from Facebook itself and from Amazon, Argos, Dixons, Harrods and Selfridges.
