Apple says Siri isn’t spying on you for ads, and that’s a key privacy reminder ahead of a big iPhone AI update

Apple says Siri isn’t spying on you for ads, and that’s a key privacy reminder ahead of a big iPhone AI update

Apple is working on a key iPhone update that will enable an important Apple Intelligence feature on supported devices. iOS 18.4 will bring the more advanced Siri assistant to the iPhone 15 Pros and all iPhone 16 models in the coming months.

Siri will have access to more contextual information from iPhone apps to better respond to user prompts. Siri will also be able to control apps to a degree. This is the first step towards creating AI assistants that know everything about the user and can handle user data.

Such functionality will benefit from strong privacy protections, as Apple will try to process most Apple Intelligence requests on the iPhone, iPad, or Mac. If that’s impossible, the prompts get sent to Apple in a brand-new, state-of-the-art cloud AI processing system that protects user privacy (the Private Cloud Compute).

But before any of that can happen, Apple has to deal with the fallout of a Siri-related lawsuit from a few years ago. Apple has agreed to pay $95 million in a class action suit that alleged some Siri recordings sent to human evaluation contained sensitive voice data collected while the assistant was activated accidentally.

The case dates back to 2019. But with Apple agreeing to settle the suit, some people might be wondering about the privacy protections that Siri offers for advertising. After all, we’ve had conspiracy theories for years that smartphones listen to what you say and then surface ads based on your interests.

Apple issued a statement on Wednesday evening to remind its customers of its “longstanding privacy commitment with Siri.”

Continue reading…

The post Apple says Siri isn’t spying on you for ads, and that’s a key privacy reminder ahead of a big iPhone AI update appeared first on BGR.

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Apple says Siri isn’t spying on you for ads, and that’s a key privacy reminder ahead of a big iPhone AI update originally appeared on BGR.com on Thu, 9 Jan 2025 at 06:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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