Facebook is looking to pay some users for voice recordings that will help improve its speech recognition technology. Spoiler: it won’t be much.
Facebook needs material to improve its speech recognition technology, the company announced on Thursday. The news comes after Facebook, but also Amazon, Google, Apple, and Microsoft, were caught listening to and transcribing voice recordings without user consent.
Facebook will launch a new program called “Pronunciations” in its Viewpoints market research app. If you qualify, you will be asked to record yourself saying the phrase “Hey Portal” followed by the first name of a friend from your friends’ list. You’ll be able to do this with the names of up to 10 friends, and you have to record each statement twice.
For your contribution to the future of speech recognition, you will be rewarded with 200 points in the Viewpoints app. You’ll need 100 Viewpoints to cash out and that translates to $5 via PayPal. Facebook explains that you may be able to make up to five sets of recordings, hence reaching the 1000 Viewpoints threshold.
Facebook says that these recordings will never be linked to your Facebook profile and that the activity will not be shared on your profile or feed.
To qualify, you will need to be based in the US, older than 18 and have at least 75 Facebook friends.