Jan 8 (Reuters) – Apple (AAPL.O) opened a new tab clarified on Wednesday that it has never sold the data collected by its Siri voice assistant or used it to create marketing profiles, just days after settling a case in which it faced such accusations.
Last week, Apple Inc. agreed to pay $95 million to settle a class action lawsuit in which plaintiffs alleged that it was routinely recording their private conversations after they had activated Siri inadvertently and disclosing these conversations to third parties like advertisers.
Voice assistants usually react when people use “hot words” such as “Hey, Siri.” The company denied those claims and did not admit to them in its settlement last week, in which tens of millions of Apple customers may receive up to $20 per Siri-enabled device, such as iPhones and Apple Watches.
Apple stated that social media users and commentators interpreted the settlement as confirmation that the allegations were true. In its statement, the Cupertino, California-based company said certain features require real-time input from Apple servers. Siri uses as little data as possible to deliver accurate results only in such cases.
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,” the company said, adding that it will continue developing technologies to make Siri even more private.
