Are you a frequent user of Google Now? The virtual assistant has proven very useful lately, and its voice recognition is one of the best on the market. However, its notable performance is linked to a very important detail: the Mountain View giant stores some records of your voice. Do you want to know its scope? The section called "Voice and Audio Activity" inside Google History is your destination.
It is one of the most delicate points that every company must balance with users and clients. The main reason many present to justify data collection is nothing other than the optimization of their services. By knowing the user's preferred material, algorithms behind the scenes can adapt to provide better content. Reality tells us that almost no one escapes this. Of course, some companies try to be more transparent than others, and offer their users mechanisms that enable the exploration of obtained information. Google History is announced as one of those mechanisms. Through this valuable resource you can control your searches and browser activity, the places you have been, your device information, and something more: your verbal commands to Google Now.
How to See Your Voice Commands
That's right: everything you have asked and consulted through Google Now can be stored on Google's servers. The process to check it is reduced to visiting Google History, logging in with our account, and visiting the section called "Your voice searches and commands". A click on the bottom link to manage activity will take you directly to "Voice and Audio Activity", and there you will see each of the stored recordings. Entries appear ordered by date, and come with a small transcription based on what we have said. The presence of the Play button does not need any kind of explanation, but you can delete anything you want from here.
Pausing the Collection
Finally, there is an option to pause the collection of verbal commands, although that pause is limited. Google warns that Google Now's accuracy will drop, while in more specific cases (I assume they speak of other languages) functions like "Ok Google" could be disabled completely. Pausing this component will not delete previous data, and Google reserves the right to continue collecting anonymous audio information. While Google is heading in the right direction by allowing us access to all this data, we are still far from an ideal solution. The "opt-out" policy has failed completely, and however good its intentions, it takes power away from the user.
