Apple apologised to users of its voice assistant Siri on Wednesday, acknowledging it had failed to live up to its own privacy ideals when it hired contractors to listen to customers’ audio recordings.
The iPhone maker said it issued new policies to protect user privacy, after conducting a review in the wake of media reports critical of how Apple used Siri recordings to improve voice recognition.
According to the Guardian, third party contractors occasionally heard confidential information and even “recordings of couples having sex”. Rival voice recognition systems such as Amazon’s Alexa also listen to audio recordings to improve their service, but Apple had not disclosed the practise to users.
Via Financial Times / The Guardian
