Yes, Microsoft Contractors Listened To Your Xbox Voice Commands

Microsoft did indeed have humans listen in on the occasional Xbox voice commands, according to a new report. This was done to improve the voice recognition software in Microsoft products, but sometimes this practice led to some game-specific recordings contractors would need to sift through.Contractors who worked at Microsoft to listen to audio recorded from voice recognition and AI software revealed that this included audio from Xbox consoles. Audio from Xbox was collected from both the Kinect and later when Xbox integrated Microsoft’s Cortana AI.

“The Xbox stuff was actually a bit of welcome respite, honestly,” one anonymous Microsoft contractor told Motherboard. “It was frequently the same games. Same DLCs. Same type of commands.” These commands were apparently requests like, “‘Xbox give me all the games for free’ or ‘Xbox download [newest Minecraft skins pack]’ or whatever.” Contractors were paid $10 and hour for this work.

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There were sometimes voice recordings that were more specific to a certain game. “Occasionally I heard ‘Xbox, tell Solas to heal,’ or something similar which would be a command for Dragon Age: Inquisition,” the former contractor revealed. Contractors also listened to voice recordings when services like Cortana was accidentally triggered by gamers.

Microsoft issued a statement to Motherboard saying, “We stopped reviewing any voice content taken through Xbox for product improvement purposes a number of months ago, as we no longer felt it was necessary, and we have no plans to re-start those reviews.” Microsoft also removed Cortana from the Xbox home screen earlier this year.

Microsoft still reviews a “low volume of voice recordings sent from one Xbox user to another when there are reports that a recording violated our terms of service and we need to investigate.” But Microsoft says this is a safety measure clearly stated in the Xbox terms of service.

The company also updated its privacy statement to make sure anyone who uses the Microsoft and Xbox services knows that Microsoft reviews voice data and processes personal date using both “automated and manual (human) methods of processing.” There is also a Microsoft page that lets users deletes audio that’s been captured by a Microsoft product.

The report comes during a time where there’s renewed interest in the personal data collected by companies like Google, Amazon, and Facebook, each with audio assistant technologies like Siri and Alexa which respond and could record audio data from users.

While there are questions about the kind of audio captured by Microsoft’s Cortana AI, it seems like the audio captured on the Xbox has largely been video game related. Though you never know what may have been accidentally recorded if you mistakenly triggered your Kinect or Cortana AI service.

Matt Kim is a reporter for IGN. You can reach him on Twitter.