Apple suspends program for people to listen to Siri voice recordings

Apple said it will temporarily suspend the practice of using contractors to evaluate snippets of Siri voice recordings in order to improve the accuracy of the voice assistant. This step followed published by The Guardian, in which a former employee detailed the program, claiming that contractors routinely hear sensitive medical information, trade secrets, and any other private recordings as part of their work (because Siri, like other voice assistants, often works by accident, sending recordings to Apple when people don't want it). Moreover, the records are allegedly accompanied by user data that reveals the location and contact information.

"We're committed to providing a great Siri experience while protecting user privacy," an Apple spokesperson told The Verge. “While a thorough analysis of the situation is underway, we are suspending the worldwide Siri performance evaluation program. In addition, in a future software update, users will be given the right to choose whether to participate in the program.”

Apple hasn't said if the company will keep Siri voice recordings on its servers. The company has now said it keeps records for six months and then removes identifying information from the copy, which can be kept for another two years or more. The purpose of the quality scorer is to improve the accuracy of Siri's voice recognition and to prevent accidental triggers. “A small portion of voice requests is analyzed to improve Siri and dictation,” Apple told The Guardian. - Requests are not tied to users' Apple IDs. Siri responses are analyzed in a secure environment, and all reviewers are required to adhere to Apple's strict privacy requirements."

However, the company's terms of service did not explicitly state that there was a possibility that people outside of Apple could listen to Siri voice requests: they only noted that certain information, including the name, contacts, music the user listens to, and voice requests are sent to Apple servers using encryption. Apple also didn't offer any way for users to opt out of Siri or opt out of the Customer Experience Improvement Program. Competing voice assistants from Amazon or Google also use human analysis to improve accuracy (this is simply inevitable), but allow you to opt out of the program.

Source: 3dnews.ru