Last week it became known that Apple had reached an agreement in the class action lawsuit filed by users whose conversations had been captured inadvertently to them and potentially listened to by human reviewers. One of the allegations recorded in the lawsuit was that Apple had shared those private communications with advertisersand the fact that the company has reached an agreement in this process has given wings to this theory. However, The company denies this and assures that it has done so in order to ‘avoid additional litigation’.
‘Siri It has been designed to protect user privacy from the beginning. Siri data They have never been used to create marketing profiles and have never been sold to a third party for any purpose.. Apple settled this case to avoid additional litigation and put behind us concerns about third-party Siri quality assessment processes that we addressed in 2019. We use Siri data to improve Siri, and We are constantly developing technologies to further strengthen Siri’s privacy.‘, states the company in a statement sent to La Razón.
The agreement, of which only some details are known and which still has to be reviewed and approved by the district judge Jeffrey White to be firm, establish that Tim Cook’s company will pay 95 million dollars to users in the United States who purchased or owned an iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, MacBook, iMac, HomePod, iPod touch or Apple TV with Siri enabled between September 17, 2014 and December 31, 2024. Beneficiaries must affirm under oath that Siri was accidentally activated during a private conversation and they will receive a maximum of 20 dollars per device, with 5 being the maximum number of them for each one. The $20 limit could be reduced depending on how many people claim a share of that $95 million.
Apple recalls that throughout the process, which has lasted 5 years, it has denied the accusation that it uses Siri recordings to direct ads to users. According to the company, what users share with Siri It is never shared with advertisers and there has been no evidence in this lawsuit or in any other context that Apple uses Siri recordings to target ads to users.. Siri data has never been used to create marketing profiles and has never been sold to a third party for any purpose.
Additionally, Apple Assistant has been designed to run maximum tasks locally on the device, without the need for an Internet connection. For example, if a user asks Siri to read their messages, Siri simply performs the task and reads them aloud, but the content of the messages is not transmitted to Apple’s servers, as it is not necessary for satisfy user requests.
In relation to Apple Intelligencewhich has not yet been deployed in Europe, the company says that using Apple’s private cloud computing User data is never stored or accessible to Applewhich has additional protections and which No user data is used to train your artificial intelligence models.
In 2019The Guardian reported that human contractors tasked with reviewing anonymized recordings and checking whether Siri had been activated intentionally by the user or accidentally, they sometimes received recordings of users with private information recorded inadvertently for them, but without reference to that data being sold to advertisers. Apple then apologized and changed its policyestablishing by default that recordings of interactions with Siri were not retained and assuring users who choose to share them, that Apple does not share them with third-party contractors.