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Paris prosecutor’s office probes Apple’s voice assistant Siri

MacDailyNews

Oct 6

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The Paris prosecutor’s office announced on Monday that it is investigating Apple’s voice assistant, Siri, following a complaint. Politico reported earlier that day that Apple is allegedly using users’ recordings without their consent.

Benoit Berthelot and Gaspard Sebag for Bloomberg News/a>:
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The probe has been referred to the Office for Combating Cybercrime, the Paris prosecutor’s office said in a statement on Monday.
The investigation concerns Apple’s collection of user recordings through Siri, the digital assistant available on most of its devices. Apple can record and retain audio interactions through Siri to help improve its services, a feature the company says is opt-in. Some of that data can be retained for up to two years and reviewed by “graders”, or subcontractors, according to Apple.

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MacDailyNews Take: Apple addressed this in January:

Although Apple attempts to do as much as possible on device, certain features require real-time input from Apple servers. And when that’s the case, Siri uses as little data as possible to deliver an accurate result. Siri searches and requests are not associated with your Apple Account. A random identifier — a long string of letters and numbers associated with a single device — is used to keep track of data while it’s being processed, rather than tying it to a user’s identity through their Apple Account or phone number — a process that we believe is unique among digital assistants in use today.

Apple does not retain audio recordings of Siri interactions unless users explicitly opt in to help improve Siri, and even then, the recordings are used solely for that purpose. Users can easily opt out at any time.