A new app that promises to pay people for their mobile phone call records, which are then used to train AI models, is becoming so popular that it’s entered Apple’s list of top-ranked free apps.
On Thursday, Neon was the fourth most popular iOS free app, ahead of Google, Temu and TikTok. It had earlier been as high as the No. 2 spot.
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Neon is available on iOS and Android. The company records users’ outgoing phone calls and pays them up to $30 a day for regular calls or 30 cents a minute if the call is to another Neon user. Calls to non-Neon users pay 15 cents a minute. The app also offers $30 for referrals.
“You can cash out as soon as you earn your first ten cents,” a Neon app FAQ says, “Once redeemed, payouts are typically processed within three business days, though timing may occasionally be shorter or longer.”
Promo images for the Neon app on the iOS App Store promise money for phone call data but don’t mention the data is used to train AI models.
Apple App Store
The company promises it only draws from the recording of one side of the phone conversation, the caller’s, which appears to be a way of skirting state laws that prohibit recording phone calls without permission.
While many states only require one person on a call to be aware that a call is being recorded, others, including California, Florida and Maryland, have laws that require all parties on a phone call to consent to recording. It’s unclear how Neon functions with calls to those states. For Neon-to-Neon calls, two-party consent would presumably be implied.
The app doesn’t record regular phone app calls, only those made within the Neon app or received from another person using Neon.
An email to Neon Mobile, the company behind the app, was not immediately returned.
While the iOS version has shot up in popularity, the Android version appears to be having some problems, at least according to some of the most recent reviews on the Google Play Store. The Android app only has a 2.4-star rating, and some user comments report network errors when people try to cash out on the Neon app.
Training AI using your data
According to the company’s FAQ, the call data is anonymized and used to train AI voice assistants. “This helps train their systems to understand diverse, real-world speech,” it says.
AI companies need increasing amounts of data to train their models, which may be why Neon is offering the monetary incentive.
“The industry is hungry for real conversations because they capture timing, filler words, interruptions and emotions that synthetic data misses, which improves quality of AI models,” said Zahra Timsah, CEO of i-Gentic AI, which works in AI compliance.
“But that doesn’t give apps a pass on privacy or consent,” Timsah said.
Pushing legal limits
TechCrunch, one of the first sites to write about the app, pointed out that sharing voice data can be a security risk, even if a company promises to remove identifying information from the data.
Neon could be pushing its luck, especially across states and countries, when it comes to privacy and IP laws or regulations, depending on how it handles consent and where the data ends up.
“We don’t know if there are sufficient safeguards to exclude the person on the other end of the conversation, but some level of consent would be required, and informing them of it being provided,” said Valence Howden, a data governance expert and advisory fellow at Info-Tech Research Group.
Howden said that even if the data is anonymized, AI might not have a hard time retroactively discovering who is on the line in a Neon conversation.
“AI can infer a lot, correct or otherwise, to fill in gaps in what it receives, and may be able to provide direct links if names or personal information are part of the exchange,” he said.
