Privacy and Security Focused Speech Recognition

Privacy is our fundamental right that protects our autonomy and dignity. It is also a basis for a diverse, open, and tolerant society. Picovoice believes technology should serve humanity, not the other way, and follows the Privacy-by-Design principles.

Privacy-by-Design has seven foundational principles. Speech recognition software, developed with privacy in mind, embeds privacy features and considerations into its core architecture and functionality as Picovoice engines do.

1. Proactive, not reactive—preventative, not remedial:
Anticipate, identify, and prevent invasive events in advance, meaning one should take action before the fact, not afterward. Unfortunately, not all vendors follow this. For example, OpenAI started allowing users to object to personal data use only under certain laws after Italy banned ChatGPT.

2. Privacy as the default setting:
Protect personal data automatically in all IT systems or business practices, with no added action required by any individual. Like OpenAI, IBM doesn’t follow Privacy-by-Design principles, and Watson services log requests and their results by default.

3. Privacy embedded into the design:
Make privacy a fully integrated component of the system, not an add-on, extra or private feature.

4. Full functionality - positive-sum, not zero-sum:
Employ a “win-win” approach to all legitimate system design goals without unnecessary trade-offs. For example, like OpenAI and IBM, Google doesn’t follow Privacy-by-Design principles and charges 50% more without a data logging option.

5. End-to-end security:
Retain data securely during the data lifecycle security as needed and destroy when no longer needed. For example, at one point, Amazon lost track of stored user data.

6. Visibility and transparency:
Assure stakeholders involved are operating according to objectives and subject to independent verification.

7. Respect for user privacy:
Keep things user-centric. Support Individual privacy interests by privacy defaults, appropriate notice, and user-friendly options.

Build with Privacy-First Voice AI

Picovoice technology processes voice data on-device, meaning Picovoice does not have access to audio data processed by Picovoice engines and outputs generated by them. Developers can confidently use Picovoice technology, designed and built with privacy in mind.