Apple has already halted a program that allowed third-party contractors to listen to Siri audio recordings, but going forward, it will limit the practice to Apple employees and make it opt in.
"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—which we call grading," Apple said in a Wednesday statement. "We heard their concerns, immediately suspended human grading of Siri requests, and began a thorough review of our practices and policies. We've decided to make some changes to Siri as a result."
The grading program will return "later this fall," and when it does, Cupertino has pledged to "no longer retain audio recordings of Siri interactions" and will instead rely on computer-generated transcripts.
Apple users, however, will be able to opt in to having their audio samples analyzed. "We hope that many people will choose to help Siri get better, knowing that Apple respects their data and has strong privacy controls in place," Apple says.
Audio recordings will only be analyzed by Apple employees, not third parties.
Before the program was shut down, contractors listened to "a small sample of audio from Siri requests—less than 0.2 percent—and their computer-generated transcripts, to measure how well Siri was responding and to improve its reliability," Apple says. "For example, did the user intend to wake Siri? Did Siri hear the request accurately? And did Siri respond appropriately to the request?"
Ultimately, however, Apple determined that its grading procses was not "fully living up to our high ideals, and for that we apologize."
The details of Apple's grading program were first reported by The Guardian last month, which noted that contractors often listened to confidential or compromising information including medical details, drug deals, and sexual encounters. In short, nothing you'd share with strangers.
Apple's decision to limit human reviewing to Apple employees means more than 300 contractors across Europe are now out of a job, The Guardian reported today. Many were working out of Cork, Ireland, and have been on paid leave since Aug. 2.
"Apple, recruiting through vendor companies in Ireland, take absolutely no responsibility in the employment of contractors and their treatment in work," an anonymous former employee told The Guardian. "They do what they want, and when they're done with your project or they screw up (like what just happened), they tell your vendor company to let you go, which they do."