Last year, Google introduced the ability to customize the sensitivity of its Smart Displays and speakers to the hotword. The Assistant is now using federated learning on Android to prevent incorrect activations and “Ok Google” type failures.
For some users, opening the Google Assistant settings today reveals a new option “Help improve the Assistant” to “save audio so that speech technologies can learn over time”. This new feature also appears in the general Google app preferences.
Your audio recordings remain on your device while privacy preservation technology combines information from you and many other participants to help the Assistant learn over time and develop better smart features.
Disabled by default, Google wants to refine its hotword detection model in two scenarios:
- On rare occasions, turn it off or on when you didn’t say “Ok Google”.
- In other cases, make a mistake or fail to act when you say “Ok Google”.
The company is using federated learning to get raw data – you say something close to “Hey Google” – to be processed locally. Instead of the audio being sent to the cloud, your device just sends a “summary of model changes to [a] Google server. ”This will help“ adjust the Google Assistant trigger logic ”.
Almost activations happen when the “Ok Google” model detects audio or something that you say almost activates the Google Assistant.
Google servers do not save your voice recordings from upcoming activations, but your device does if federated learning is enabled. Your device may not display anything when it stores these recordings and can store up to 20 recordings per day …
Voice recordings are encrypted, with processing taking place when the phone is inactive, charging and connected to Wi-Fi. It will be deleted after it is no longer needed or in 63 days.
If you disable the setting, local recordings will be deleted, although your data will still be kept in the cloud as part of the Web and App Activity setting, which can be removed separately or configured for automatic deletion.
In addition to the Assistant, Google already uses federated learning on Gboard and the Health Studies app. This feature was not widely implemented today and only appeared on one device / account (Pixel 5 on Android 11).
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