Audacity has added AI audio editing capabilities thanks to Intel’s free OpenVINO plugins. These plugins add AI-powered noise suppression, speech transcription, music generation and remixing, and music separation to the freeware sound editor and are available for download today.
after looking into it:
it's not and it never was.
a) it's open source, so nobody's putting that shit in there without getting caught
b) it had an opt-in error reporting feature that would send data back... that was the entire thing...
Not really that simple, it was an apparent change to the privacy policy that vaguely anticipated collection of arbitrary user data, which shook the confidence of the open source community on the project. The fact this happened right after audacity was sold was the cherry on top.
Were they reverted? I'll have to check later, but an official statement from Muse Group stated they provided the data they collected to third parties so idk. If the telemetry is still there then I'm not downloading it, Open Source projects generally don't need telemetry to begin with.
in 2021 Audacity was acquired by a company called MuseGroup who added unnecessary telemetry and they admit that they do provide the data the collect to third parties. It's spyware as far as I'm concerned.
If it was truly opt in, then why did the community feel the need to create forks removing the telemetry? Plus, a lot of FOSS don't need telemetry to start with. They get tons of voluntary high quality feedback without automated collection.
Point a has always me me wonder, is that accurate? Are there actually people going through the code to make sure open source isn't malicious? I can barely read my coworkers code... Let alone a strangers.
Its way less work than going through the code to check for telemetry unless it is an intentionally hidden attack- just use Wireshark and check if there is network traffic other than checking for an update on program start.
That's not entirely true, Audacity was acquired by a company called MuseGroup who added unnecessary telemetry and they admit that they do provide the data the collect to third parties. It's spyware as far as I'm concerned.
It was a pull request to add opt-out analytics that got blown out of proportion, where the real issue was the EULA and how tonedeaf of a move it was considering the community around Audacity. IIRC, they ended up replacing it with opt-in analytics.