Recently, Apple agreed to settle a lawsuit — and pay $95 million — in a case that alleged its voice assistant Siri was recording users’ conversations without consent. Now, Apple has issued a statement on privacy concerns around Siri and how it keeps user data private.
“Apple has never used Siri data to build marketing profiles, never made it available for advertising, and never sold it to anyone for any purpose. We are constantly developing technologies to make Siri even more private, and will continue to do so,” said the company in a statement.
Apple said that privacy is a foundation part of the design process for the company and it holds true for Siri as well.
The company also said that when a user talks or types to Siri, their request is processed on device whenever possible. For example, when a user asks Siri to read unread messages, or when Siri provides suggestions through widgets and Siri search, the processing is done on the user’s device. “The contents of the messages aren’t transmitted to Apple servers, because that isn’t necessary to fulfill the request. And for capable devices, the audio of user requests is processed entirely on device using the Neural Engine, unless a user chooses to share it with Apple,” clarified the company.
However, it also made it clear that certain features require real-time input from Apple servers. “And when that’s the case, Siri uses as little data as possible to deliver an accurate result,” said Apple. Apple does not retain audio recordings of Siri interactions unless users explicitly opt in to help improve Siri, and even then, the recordings are used solely for that purpose. Users can easily opt out at any time, said Apple.
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