Adopt-Adapt-Improve

Spinvox is a service which offers to convert Voicemails to text.

Their service claims to use high-tech voice recognition technology, their ‘How it Works’ page explains that a “Voice Message Conversion System, known as ‘D2’ (the Brain)” is used.

The BBC’s Technology correspondent, Rory Cellan-Jone, has revealed online in his article Voice Technology Under Fire that this is often not actually the case.

Furthermore, Spinvox’s Data Protection statement states that user’s messages never leave the EU, when in fact they are often transcribed by workers in call centres in Egypt or the Phillipines. There are even comments about Egyptian workers exposing sensitive customer information on Facebook.

This is a huge test for Technology & Trust!

Interestingly, during a debate on Radio 4′s Today programme this morning, Evan Davies (who is a Spinvox user), described it as an addictive service which he found very useful despite its inaccuracies, and wondered whether it really mattered how the service actually worked …

It is going to be fascinating to see how this company copes with this kind of exposé.

Just one extract from the BBC’s article:

“The machine doesn’t understand anything,” he explained. “You have to start typing when you hear the message.”

Other call centre staff in South Africa and the Philippines have discussed on blogs how they have also transcribed calls for Spinvox.

A source at the company has told the BBC that the vast majority of messages are in fact converted into text by staff at call centres.

The fact that messages appear to have been read by workers outside of the European Union raises questions about the firm’s data protection policy.

The firm’s entry on the UK Data Protection Register says it does not transfer anything outside the European Economic Area.