Apple made headlines last week for all the wrong reasons when the iPhone maker agreed to settle a lawsuit that accused its Siri voice assistant of hearing and recording users’ interactions.
The company’s settlement included a $95 million payout to settle the legal matter. Soon after that, a wave of new conspiracy theories arose about Siri taking part in this unlawful practice of targeted ads. Now, the company is raising more eyebrows by claiming there is no such evidence to prove any of this.
Let’s take a trip down memory lane to see where all of this stems from. We know that the legal issues began in 2019 when The Guardian accused Apple of hiring contractors to evaluate Siri’s interactions. As per the whistleblower for the report, these people were hired to hear private chats from users to ensure quality control for the voice assistant.
During that moment in time, Apple shared a quick response on that front by claiming less than 1% of those chats were used for the sole purpose of grading them. They also fought back those allegations by mentioning how the conversations lasted just a couple of seconds. If that was not enough, the Cupertino firm stated that it was all in line with the company’s stringent confidentiality contract and not linked to the user’s Apple ID.
The company also shared several amendments to the voice assistant’s privacy protection features while publishing a new blog through its Newsroom. The major change here was no record of Siri’s interactions would be made by default. If users wanted this, they could opt into the feature designed to assist Siri improve.
Apple also shared more on this front including how only certain employees were able to hear the audio samples of those interactions and not any contractors from third parties. Moreover, any recording that triggered Siri would instantly get deleted.
So now that we’re in 2025, the question remains… is your device listening to your chats to target you for ads? The tech giant says no and no evidence in place shows that this was the company’s intention ever.
Apple added in bold terms that there were no records made for marketing purposes and neither was anything ever sold off to anyone which we have to admit is reassuring to hear. Siri was designed to protect users’ privacy from the start, Apple adds. So now the question remains, why did they agree to a settlement in the lawsuit?
As per Apple, they didn’t want to get into any more legal complications so they wished to move past swiftly from concerns linked to grading done by third parties. They concluded by stating that Siri’s data was used to make Siri better and that’s it. Furthermore, the company is trying to come up with technologies that make Siri even more private than before.
Image: DIW-Aigen
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The company’s settlement included a $95 million payout to settle the legal matter. Soon after that, a wave of new conspiracy theories arose about Siri taking part in this unlawful practice of targeted ads. Now, the company is raising more eyebrows by claiming there is no such evidence to prove any of this.
Let’s take a trip down memory lane to see where all of this stems from. We know that the legal issues began in 2019 when The Guardian accused Apple of hiring contractors to evaluate Siri’s interactions. As per the whistleblower for the report, these people were hired to hear private chats from users to ensure quality control for the voice assistant.
During that moment in time, Apple shared a quick response on that front by claiming less than 1% of those chats were used for the sole purpose of grading them. They also fought back those allegations by mentioning how the conversations lasted just a couple of seconds. If that was not enough, the Cupertino firm stated that it was all in line with the company’s stringent confidentiality contract and not linked to the user’s Apple ID.
The company also shared several amendments to the voice assistant’s privacy protection features while publishing a new blog through its Newsroom. The major change here was no record of Siri’s interactions would be made by default. If users wanted this, they could opt into the feature designed to assist Siri improve.
Apple also shared more on this front including how only certain employees were able to hear the audio samples of those interactions and not any contractors from third parties. Moreover, any recording that triggered Siri would instantly get deleted.
So now that we’re in 2025, the question remains… is your device listening to your chats to target you for ads? The tech giant says no and no evidence in place shows that this was the company’s intention ever.
Apple added in bold terms that there were no records made for marketing purposes and neither was anything ever sold off to anyone which we have to admit is reassuring to hear. Siri was designed to protect users’ privacy from the start, Apple adds. So now the question remains, why did they agree to a settlement in the lawsuit?
As per Apple, they didn’t want to get into any more legal complications so they wished to move past swiftly from concerns linked to grading done by third parties. They concluded by stating that Siri’s data was used to make Siri better and that’s it. Furthermore, the company is trying to come up with technologies that make Siri even more private than before.
Read next: Apple Vows To Update Intelligence Notification Summaries With New ‘AI-Generated’ Labels
