In a bid to improve its voice recognition algorithms, Facebook will pay up to $5 to record people’s voices.

 

It’s asking them to record such phrases like “Hey Portal, call…” which is a command for its camera-equipped home device. It is also asking people to say the first name of a Facebook friend twice for 10 different people. The task takes just about five minutes to complete.

 

Completing each task nets 200 points in the app and it can only be completed five times, for a total of 1,000 points. The 1000 points amount to $5 which the user will receive via PayPal.

 

 

The Verge explains the new programme is called ‘Pronunciations’. The programme is part of the Facebook Viewpoints market research app, which rewards its users for helping the company with testing and surveys. It pays people to complete surveys and tasks to improve its array of products, including WhatsApp, Oculus VR headsets and Portal.

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Facebook says pronunciations is available to only users in the US

For now, the scheme is only open to users in the US. They must be over 18 years old, and have at least 75 Facebook friends to qualify for Pronunciations.

 

Facebook says the voice recordings its users provide will not in any way be connected to their Facebook profile. The social media giants say it doesn’t share Viewpoints activity on Facebook or other Facebook-owned services without permission.

 

Facebook also says it will be rolling out the Pronunciations program out slowly, so it won’t be available to all its users immediately.

 

This scheme comes after Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google, as well as Microsoft, were caught listening to and transcribing voice recordings to improve their speech recognition systems without informing customers it was doing so.

 

Apple and Google have stopped their audio transcription programs. Amazon, however, now lets its users opt-out of audio recording “review.”

 

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