SpinVox

July 23rd, 2009 13:54 UTC by John ·

Update 2: SpinVox finally responds. (Via the Guardian.)

3) “All SpinVox messages are listened to by Human agents”

No. As per fact one, SpinVox only employs agents to step in when messages need analysis and the machine gets to decide. However, the agents in question will only ever hear/see the specific parts of the messages that need work on. They never see fully automated message conversions because we don’t send them on once they’re complete.

4) “How many messages are referred — in any way — to human operators during the transcription process?”

Well I’ll be honest with you folks, I’ve been wrestling away with this one most of today. I wish I could tell you, really I could. But this information is so business critical to our operation that we simply cannot share it.
I’m not kidding when I say that it would be the equivalent of Coca-Cola publishing their exact recipe up on their own blog.
Sounds ridiculous I know, but the key thing here is that we have kick-ass data security standards that, in the entire history of the VMCS, have NEVER BEEN BREACHED.

The post concludes:

Now, thanks to all of this – SpinVox signups are actually up!
…Thank you very much to all those at the Beeb

“Signups.” I wonder how many cancellations there have been in the last week?

Update: It looks like we can add this incident to the catalog of PR failures:

They should have used their own media — their blog — to manage and direct attention. To run a conversation. Instead they retreated behind closed doors and used their medium simply for publishing a one-way media statement. They should have linked to the BBC post and every other post of those raising issues with the company. They should have then collated the main issues into a Q&A series of challenges with their rebuttals . . .

Really, the problem for most people isn’t that humans are involved in the process — it’s the blurring. The fact that we don’t really know what’s going on. . .

That confusion, doubt and ’sweatshop’ message is spreading — and, from the conversations I’ve had with normal non-tech (and techie) folk, it’s sticking.

Let’s have some clarity, SpinVox?

Of course… if we don’t get clarity as I’ve described above, it’s going to be painfully clear, surely, that the percentage of human vs machine is shockingly embarrassing.

Original Post: Well, this is a fascinating story (which I found via Twitter) to start my day.

I became aware of SpinVox very early in its history, when I bid for some project work at its Alpharetta offices. And I’ve watched as the company grew and succeeded. But now it appears that SpinVox’s vaunted speech-to-text technology may not be so technological after all.

But in the last few days, I’ve been given a somewhat different picture – by one current employee, and several others who’ve worked for the company in recent years. Most significantly, they’ve told me that the central claim of the company – that it’s getting machines to translate audio into text – doesn’t really stand up, because most of the work is actually done in call centres dotted around the world.

The Register piles on:

The worst kept secret in the mobile industry is out: disgruntled Spinvox call centre staff have been telling the BBC that they’re not actually robots, or even highly advanced man-machine cyborg hybrids. But this is a surprise only to the gullible, or people who have never used Spinvox.

Spinvox is a voicemail to text service that purports to use “D2 … a combination of artificial intelligence, voice recognition and natural linguistics”, when in fact, the BBC claims today, low-paid sweatshop staff in foreign countries do almost all of the translations. This had been known for ages – with these photographs popping up last year.

And TechCrunch has some very troubling Facebook screenshots as well.

The data privacy issues here are troubling – privacy laws in countries where the transcriptions are performed don’t come near the protections provided in Europe (which are much more stringent than in the USA), if they exist at all.

The information commissioner has asked the firm to explain why its entry on the Data Protection Register says no data will be transferred outside the European Economic Area.

As well, this:

The worry is that SpinVox is sending our voicemails overseas to be translated by loose-lipped call centres, who might blab our secrets everywhere.

The BBC reports that a Facebook group for people who worked at a SpinVox call centre in Egypt shows screenshots of whole voicemails that were sent to people to be transcribed, including what looks like confidential business info.

SpinVox says its voice-recognition system relies on the Brain, but uses people when the computer can’t recognise some words. In fact, it says this combo of computer and human brain power is the big idea behind SpinVox.

The marketing-speak on SpinVox’s Web site makes its system sound like a Big Thought-style black box surrounded by white-coated boffins, but the reality is more technical and mundane . . .

As for privacy, SpinVox insists that it sticks to the letter of the law. It stores data within the European Economic Area, as enforced by the UK Data Protection Act, and everything sent to its overseas call centres is encrypted.

“The security we have is the same sort that you’d have with your bank. When you call your bank, you’re giving an operator totally complete information — they could write that down. Our guys can’t even do that,” Simnett said . . .

We think SpinVox could have avoided this controversy if it had toned down its super-computer marketing message and been clearer that our voicemails will probably be peeked at by overseas call centres, even if it’s only in little pieces. Then we wouldn’t feel so cheated that there’s not a giant robot answering our calls.

So, the larger damage may be to SpinVox’s brand – not for using humans to transcribe the messages, but for misleading its customers and regulators.

Definitely a story to watch.