San Francisco (AFP)

Facebook has paid hundreds of subcontractors to transcribe snippets of conversations of some users, reveals Tuesday the agency Bloomberg, although the first social network in the world has long denied to act in this way to better calibrate its ads or pages of 'information.

In a statement sent to the financial agency, Facebook acknowledges having transcribed sound recordings of conversations - with the authorization of users - but claims to have put an end to this practice.

"Just like Apple or Google, we have frozen the practice of listening to sound recordings by humans last week," says the social network.

Asked by AFP, Facebook did not respond immediately.

Facebook explains that it was authorized to transcribe their conversation by users of its Messenger application.

Subcontractors checked whether the artificial intelligence of the network was correctly interpreting messages that had been made anonymous.

According to Bloomberg, employees who are in charge of transcription worry about the ethical implications of their work, being unaware of the origin of the recordings of the conversations, or the use made by the company founded by Mark. Zuckerberg.

Amazon, Apple and Google, all selling voice assistants, had already acknowledged doing the same to improve the answers of their applications. Apple and Google have said they have dropped the practice in recent weeks.

Amazon gives users the choice to block the use of their exchanges with Alexa, the artificial intelligence that drives their Echo voice assistants.

Facebook, which has just paid a record $ 5 billion fine to the US federal authorities for misusing the private data of its users, has long denied using audio recordings to better target its ads or make its pages more attractive .

The founder and CEO of the social networking giant rejected the idea even at a congressional hearing in April 2018.

"You're talking about a circulating conspiracy theory that says we're listening to what's going on in your mike and we're using it for advertising," the young billionaire told a question from Senator Gary Peters. do not do that, "he replied firmly.

Later, Facebook had specified that it accesses the microphone of a user only if the latter had given permission to the application.

According to Bloomberg, the company did not specify what it was doing afterwards.

© 2019 AFP