Following last week’s report by The Guardian claiming that third party contractors listen to Siri recordings of people asking questions and personal conversations in order to improve their assistant response system, Apple has now reportedly shut down the program all around the world. This news surfaced the internet shortly after Google announced to temporarily shut down a similar effort for EU users.
“We are committed to delivering a great Siri experience while protecting user privacy,” an Apple spokesperson says in a statement to The Verge. “While we conduct a thorough review, we are suspending Siri grading globally. Additionally, as part of a future software update, users will have the ability to choose to participate in grading.”
Other assistants like Amazon and Google too have been reported to secretly eavesdrop on personal conversations of their users but the major concern with Apple was they didn’t offer users any way to opt-out. Amazon and Google offer an option to opt-out.
Apple:
We are committed to delivering a great Siri experience while protecting user privacy. While we conduct a thorough review, we are suspending Siri grading globally. Additionally, as part of a future software update, users will have the ability to choose to participate in grading.
Since Apple is one company that has always been the most privacy-conscious mobile firms, it comes as a great responsibility for Apple to foresee the safety and protection of its user data. And Apple didn’t disappoint us as they shut down the program within a week the reports of listening to Siri conversations came in.
We still aren’t clear as to what will happen with the program but reports say that Apple will bring in a software update to allow users the option to opt-in/out of the grading.