Google Touts Privacy Options, But Still Depends On Your Data

Google’s latest phone and smart-home devices came packaged with a not-so-subtle message: Google cares about your privacy. Does it?

The tech company has had a complicated relationship with user information in the past. Google’s latest steps offer consumers some additional protections, although it’s unclear how much more secure users will feel.

Google unveiled a new Pixel smartphone and other hardware devices, all aimed at getting people more hooked on services powered by the company’s Google Assistant and other artificial-intelligence technology.

But privacy has emerged as a bigger issue with these products thanks to the growing popularity of always-listening “smart speakers” and similar devices. Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Apple have all recently acknowledged employing human contractors to listen to and transcribe some voice recordings captured by AI software.

Most such AI work, from interpreting voice requests to answering questions to turning on your lights, takes place in the cloud, not on your device. Users have very little control of what happens to their data in the cloud.

On Tuesday, though, Google emphasized that much of what you do on its new phones will stay there. Its new facial recognition unlock feature won’t transmit details to Google servers for processing, for instance, and its Assistant can also handle many queries directly on the phone. A new recording transcription feature and radar technology that recognizes gestures are also done on the device.