Remember how Apple recorded and sent conversations recorded by Siri either when the wakeup command was spoken or accidentally? It is back as per the latest update.
Apple suspended the practice of recording and getting the audio recordings scrutinized and graded by human contractors back in August when news started breaking off about it. Being Apple, the company that puts privacy as its fundamental motto, this seemed to put more than a billion of its users in peril as it was discovered that these recordings could contain even sensitive information such as intimate conversations, conversations between doctors and patients, drug deals, and whatnot. Soon after Apple suspended it, other bigwigs like Google and Amazon pumped breaks on the same only to restart it earlier last month when Google restarted the grading process to better train its Google Assistant although with a warning that users can check and opt-out if provided with an option.
Anyways, talking about Apple, people who have upgraded to the latest iOS 13.2 have started getting consumer notices promoting them if they want to share their audio recordings that Siri collects or click on ‘Not Now’ to skip the move for some time. Although Apple did mention that the data collected by Siri is nowhere associated with user’s Apple ID which makes it difficult for any rogue contractor to trace any particular Apple user with the recordings, this is not enough since it is still breaching their privacy as most of the recordings that reach Apple are triggered accidentally when Siri assumes that a wakeup command was spoken.
Apple did mention earlier that it will be resuming the human reviewing process this fall, although it is not confirmed when it will start it. Once the user selects ‘Share Audio Recordings’, he/she is liable to share his/her recordings as it was consensual and not without permission while those who have reportedly clicked on ‘Not Now’ will opt out of the human grading process although it could be doubted for how long they are away from these human reviewing clutches.
Google and Amazon both started reviewing audio recordings to train and improve the responses of their artificial intelligence i.e. Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, respectively.
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