NEW GUIDELINES FOR VIRTUAL VOICE ASSISTANTS AND PERSONAL DATA PROCESSING

#31New guidelines for virtual voice assistants and personal data processing

The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) has adopted new Guidelines on Virtual Voice Assistants (Guideline 02/2021 on Virtual Voice Assistants).

A virtual voice assistant is a service that understands and evaluates voice instructions with understanding which, if needed, are consequently performed, or mediated by another information system. The most well-known are, e.g., Siri on iOS and MacOS devices or Alexa from Amazon.

These assistants can serve as an interface between users, their equipment and the service provided to them, e.g. voice measures. Due to their diversity of use, they have access to an extensive library of data, both on input (such as a search term or address) and output (such as a history of search results).

The Guidelines emphasize obligations of data controllers, mainly: :/p>

1. providers or designers should consider that when collecting user’s voice, the recording might contain other individuals’ voice or data such as background noise that is not necessary for the service. Whenever possible, voice assistants’ designers should therefore consider technologies filtering the unnecessary data and ensuring that only the user voice is recorded.
2. Data controllers providing voice assistant services should ensure users can exercise their data subject rights using easy-to-follow voice commands.
3. Data controllers providing voice assistant services through screenless terminal devices must still inform users according to the GDPR when setting up the voice assistant or installing or using a voice assistant app for the first time.