Recording a telephone call using Amazon Transcribe is a feature that, according to AWS, is already possible in 31 languages (of which six in real-time) for organisations like call centres. However, the service had one drawback: it actually recorded all calls word for word, including sensitive data that could be used to identify individuals.
Where browsing back through a recorded conversation for marketing purposes was extremely useful, according to Amazon, there were questions about safeguarding people’s privacy. After all, during conversations with companies, customers often pass on personal data that does not need to be stored, as it is of no practical use. That’s why Amazon is introducing a new privacy feature for Transcribe users, which automatically removes sensitive data such as personal information, credit card numbers, and addresses from the transcribed conversation.
Companies can tick which data should be removed and which should remain, as in some cases data such as addresses are necessary to have. In addition, the deleted part will be marked with a timestamp, so that someone who can access the actual audio file can still access the data for verification purposes.
The feature has been added to the Transcribe service immediately and works in all supported languages.