Apple Says Siri Data Used Only to Improve Voice Assistant

Apple reportedly said Monday (Jan. 6) that data collected by its voice assistant, Siri, is used only to improve the product and has never been used for marketing or sold to others.

The company said this after agreeing last week to pay $95 million to settle a privacy lawsuit, 9to5Mac reported Monday.

“Siri has been engineered to protect user privacy from the beginning,” Apple told 9to5Mac, per the report. “Siri data has never been used to build marketing profiles and it has never been sold to anyone for any purpose. Apple settled this case to avoid additional litigation so we can move forward from concerns about third-party grading that we already addressed in 2019. We use Siri data to improve Siri, and we are constantly developing technologies to make Siri even more private.”

In 2019, after a report in the Guardian alleged that contractors used by Apple would hear private interactions from users while “grading” Siri interactions, Apple announced changes to the voice assistant’s privacy protections, according to the report.

Among these changes: Apple stopped retaining recordings of Siri interactions, enabled users to opt-in to allow Siri to learn from audio samples of their requests, let only Apple employees listen to audio samples, and promised to delete any recording that seemed to result from the user’s inadvertent triggering of Siri, per the report.

It was reported Thursday (Jan. 2) that a preliminary settlement of the privacy lawsuit was filed Tuesday (Dec. 31) but must be approved by a U.S. district judge.

In the agreement, Apple denied wrongdoing, according to a Reuters report.

In addition to the $95 million payout, the proposed settlement requires Apple to address the alleged privacy violations outlined in the lawsuit by confirming it has permanently deleted Siri audio recordings obtained before October 2019 and by publishing an explanation to users about how they can opt-in to a choice to improve Siri, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Thursday.

The plaintiffs alleged that when Siri was activated unintentionally, it shared the private discussions it overheard with Apple, and that Apple shared these communications with third parties without users’ consent, according to the WSJ report.