My main reason for experimenting with Mycroft, is the reluctance to use the system of one if the big guys and their doubtful respect for our privacy. I guess this is th case for many Mycroft users. But now I’m curious: how much do we give away when we start using Google’s TTS/STT?
Out of the box, your STT and TTS requests are proxied through Mycroft-the-company, who are only caching requests long enough to avoid repeated, identical API queries within a short time. They don’t log, nor store the cache where employees can see it, and the way I know that is because the one time they thought they’d accidentally stored accessible logs, they freaked the f*** out.
And then determined that they hadn’t.
So, while it’s not perfect, and hosting your own deepspeech is obviously the most secure solution, you’re loads better off than if you were just using Google yourself. All Google sees is yet another request from the same place (“all” Mycroft users.)
@ChanceNCounter Thanx for the explanation. I didn’t realize all request are going through Mycroft. From a privacy point of view, that’s definitely a plus. I would prefer to completely do without Google though
@baconator My native language is Dutch. Although my English is good enough to use Mycroft effectively, Dutch would be easier and more comfortable. For my girlfriend even more so.
That the stream is anonymized means nothing nowadays. There are so much datapoints out there, it should be pretty easy for a company this potent to match those to the feed.
I guess your right, in the sense that a digital assistant should not be the only thing you must be careful with. But what i hear you saying is: “Don’t bother. They know who you are and what you do, no matter what”. So why bother using Mycroft then? Why not simply use an assistant from one of the big guys?
Don’t forget that english speakers can easily circumvent the problem with little effort. And Mycroft (by now) only supports english language.
Yet, as stated in the DevSyncs by Josh, internationalization is pretty high on the priority list post MK2. And that Mozilla don’t actively furthers CommonVoice anymore can be seen as an opportunity to get some viable buisiness operation going and kicking back advancements the same time.
And, there are options… but not in the quality one would like to have.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to be critical about Mycroft. Not at all. It’s is a nice hobby project. If I can get Mycroft to work reliable and stable in English, I’m a happy dude