By The sensation that every single object in your house knows your innermost thoughts and unspoken desires is something we've all just had to lump as a condition of being able to navigate through our daily lives, but it's still a bit gutting when you find out a trusted ally has been grassing on you to some nerds in California.
Microsoft admitted that Xbox consoles have been used to gather snippets of conversation which were then reviewed by human contractors so they could improve its voice control features, but insists that that's no problem really because they stopped doing it "months ago".
"We stopped reviewing any voice content taken through Xbox for product improvement purposes a number of months ago, as we no longer felt it was necessary, and we have no plans to restart those reviews," Microsoft told Vice.
That in itself was a bit of a surprise to a lot of users when it first became known. The thing is, while the recordings were only meant to be made when a user said something like "Xbox" or "Hey Cortana" before making a command, recordings were often triggered and made by mistake.
Microsoft added that it still gets humans to review recordings taken from Xbox consoles, and that there's now a dedicated page where you can delete any recordings made from your machine.
"We occasionally review a low volume of voice recordings sent from one Xbox user to another when there are reports that a recording violated our terms of service and we need to investigate. This is done to keep the Xbox community safe and is clearly stated in our Xbox terms of service."
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