Apple has apologised for contractors who retained audio recordings users made to its smart voice assistant Siri – promising to make changes.
This development comes after a Guardian report which claimed Apple contractors could hear users’ private conversations, a serious breach of user privacy and confidentiality.
According to Apple, the practice was designed to improve the quality of the voice assistant application, but nonetheless, put the program on hold after increased public and political scrutiny.
”We will let only employees review the audio and will work to delete any recording, which is determined to be an inadvertent trigger of Siri,” said Apple.
“The pause on the program will remain in place until the changes are carried out but did not give a date.”
Just today, Apple has confirmed that it will quit keeping audio for human review and instead will let users opt in to the practice of audio reviewing.
“We know that customers have been concerned by recent reports of people listening to audio Siri recordings as part of our Siri quality evaluation process,” Apple continued.
“As a result of our review, we realise we haven’t been fully living up to our high ideals, and for that, we apologise.”
Apple’s recent data privacy woes has also forced other Silicon Valley companies to provide greater transparency with their business practices.
Google temporarily stopped human reviews of its recordings, Amazon changed its settings to allow users to avoid any review of Alexa recordings, while Facebook have halted its practice of human reviews of users’ audio clips.
