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Facebook under probe in Germany over audio transcriptions

The Hamburg Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information in Germany is probing Facebook Inc. for transcribing audio recordings from users of its Messenger app.

The social media giant used "manual evaluation" to transcribe human-to-machine and human-to-human communications, according to the watchdog.

Ireland's Data Protection Commission said Facebook inadvertently manually transcribed audio clips of less than 50 European users in 14 countries, Bloomberg News reported, citing an emailed statement. Facebook had reportedly pledged to inform the Irish regulator before it started manually transcribing the audio data of its European users.

Earlier, Google LLC coordinated with the Hamburg data protection watchdog about a recent leak of more than 1,000 private conversations on Google Assistant to a Belgian news outlet. The Alphabet Inc. unit suspended the transcriptions of voice recordings following the incident.

The regulator said Google should seek users' consent for transcriptions, as well as inform them about the risks of accidental activation and incorrect processing of speech recordings.