Siri and respect for privacy: Apple drives the point home

Apple agreed at the beginning of January to pay $95 million to end a class action accusing Siri of listening to users’ private conversations. The federal court in Oakland, California, must still study the Cupertino company’s proposal, which would end a five-year-old legal proceeding.

Remember that many customers criticized Siri for recording even though they had not activated the virtual assistant. These conversations would have been transmitted to advertisers for targeted advertising. Even if Apple should escape without criminal sanction, its image is damaged. The American company publishes a long press release to reassure the public.

Apple ensures that Siri and Apple Intelligence respect your privacy

Apple once again affirms that Siri does not listen to your conversations to transmit your data to advertisers. « To protect user privacy, Siri is designed to perform as much processing as possible on the user’s device, allowing the experience to be personalized without having to transfer and analyze personal information on Siri’s servers. Apple. When a user speaks or types to Siri, their request is processed on the device whenever possible », Writes the company in its press release.

For example, the content of messages is never transmitted to its servers, assures Apple. Furthermore, the apple brand claims that audio of user requests is processed entirely on the device using the neural engine. On the other hand, “ some features require real-time data from Apple servers ».

The Cupertino company specifies that in this case, your data is still protected given that a random identifier composed of letters and numbers is associated with your device, and not your Apple account information such as your name or phone number.

Apple is also trying to show its credentials regarding privacy protection by Apple Intelligence. « Many models that power Apple Intelligence run entirely on-device. For Apple Intelligence requests that require access to larger models, Private Cloud Compute extends privacy and security from iPhone to the cloud. When Siri uses Private Cloud Compute, user data is neither stored nor made accessible to Apple, and Private Cloud Compute only uses this data to fulfill the request “. A necessary press release, but will it be enough to reassure consumers?