52 MACWORLD OCTOBER 2019
iOSCENTRAL APPLE APOLOGIZES FOR SIRI GRADING PROGRAMreview and has issued a statement (go.
macworld.com/stat) apologizing for the
way this program had been carried out so
far. The company plans to reinstate the
program this fall after making some
important changes.
The apology begins with a familiar
statement: “At Apple, we believe privacy is
a fundamental human right.” It then
describes how Apple designed Siri to
protect your privacy—collecting as little
data as possible, using random identifiers
instead of personally identifiable
information, never using data to build
marketing profiles or sell to others.
The statement then goes on to make
sure you understand that using your data
helps make Siri better, that “training” on
real data is necessary, and only 0.2
percent of Siri requests were graded by
humans.
After all of this, Apple does get around
to the actual apology that should have
been in the first paragraph.
As a result of our review, we realize we
haven’t been fully living up to our high
ideals, and for that we apologize.
Apple will resume the Siri grading
program this fall, but only after making
the following changes:
> First, by default, we will no longer
retain audio recordings of Siri
interactions. We will continue to usecomputer-generated transcripts to help
Siri improve.
> Second, users will be able to opt in
to help Siri improve by learning from the
audio samples of their requests. 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. Those who
choose to participate will be able to
opt out at any time.
> Third, when customers opt in, only
Apple employees will be allowed to
listen to audio samples of the Siri
interactions. Our team will work to
delete any recording which is
determined to be an inadvertent
trigger of Siri.This is the right move, and it once
again puts Apple ahead of other tech
giants in protecting your privacy and
security. Apple is making the program
opt-in rather than opt-out, an important
distinction as the vast majority of users
never stray from the default settings. It’s
also going to make sure these audio
samples stay in-house rather than going
into the hands of third-party contractors.
Hopefully, this spotlight on Siri’s
training, evaluation, and grading will have
a positive effect not only for user privacy,
but for helping Siri to improve more
quickly. ■