Apple recently agreed to pay $95 million to settle a Siri class action lawsuit alleging privacy violations. The company is now restating the voice assistant’s commitment to user privacy through an article on its newsroom.
Apple reassures users that it never used Siri data to build marketing profiles or sold it to anyone. Instead, it is always developing new ways to make Siri more privacy-friendly.
Siri takes privacy seriously
In August 2019, users filed a class action lawsuit against Apple after discovering that Siri recorded their commands without explicit consent. The company admitted to making such recordings to improve Siri. Worse, in a massive privacy disaster, a whistleblower revealed that third-party Apple contractors frequently listened to some of these recordings.
Five years later, Apple agreed to settle this lawsuit by paying $95 million. However, to prevent irreversible damage to Siri’s reputation, it published an article highlighting the privacy measures adopted by its voice assistant.
At the outset, Apple clarifies that it “never used Siri data to build marketing profiles, never made it available for advertising, and never sold it to anyone for any purpose.”
Apple then proceeds to highlight how Siri protects user data. This includes using on-device processing for the majority of voice commands. Even when Siri processes information on the cloud, it sends only the relevant voice command to Apple’s servers.
Siri voice recordings are not retained unless you grant consent
The company further claims it does not link Siri searches and requests to any Apple account.
“A random identifier — a long string of letters and numbers associated with a single device — is used to keep track of data while it’s being processed, rather than tying it to a user’s identity through their Apple Account or phone number — a process that we believe is unique among digital assistants in use today,” says Apple.
Unless explicitly opted by the user, Apple claims not to retain any Siri user audio interactions.
Apple claims to use the same privacy-first approach for Apple Intelligence. It says most Apple Intelligence models run on-device. When there’s a need to use a larger model, Apple’s Private Cloud Compute servers process the data. These servers use the company’s in-house Apple silicon chips for better performance and efficiency.
