Apple confirms that contractors hired for checking the quality of Siri recording listens small portion of Siri requests. According to Apple “a small portion of Siri requests” are sent to the hired contractors to review users interactions with the Siri App. Apple is doing so to improve the quality of Siri applications. But there are huge privacy issues as hired contractors are listening confidential conversations.
Apple admits that “a small portion” of Siri recordings is sent to human reviewer to review in order to increase the quality of service.
According to the Guardian report hired contractors listens confidential information such as medical information, drug deals and the recordings of couples having sex. With this review process, reviewed data is used by Apple to enhance the quality of Siri.
Apple never disclosed about human review of recorded data in its any of the consumer-facing documentations. According to Apple a small portion of recordings are sent to contractors around the world for review. Although sent data does not contains any apple id or customer identification details.
According to Apple contractors are asked to grade Siri on a number of factors such as is it able to understand customer query, reply correctness, accidental activation, Siri response and so on. All these review data is used by Apple for making Siri more intelligent.
In the past Amazon, Google were found to do a manual review of recorded voice command and now it’s Apple. Now Apple is also doing a human review of the interaction of users with the smart speakers and phones. Forget about privacy, now Apple human reviewers listen your interaction with smart speakers and phones.
According to Apple less than 1 percent of daily Siri requests are getting reviewed by human reviewers. Apple further said “Siri responses are analysed in secure facilities and all reviewers are under the obligation to adhere to Apple’s strict confidentiality requirements.”
Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant applications also follow the similar review process the accuracy of the application. According to the Apple its hired contactors have to grade the clips by listening few seconds long audio clip and this process is necessary to increase Siri accuracy.
For general mobile users it is little disconcerting as their daily chit chat is being listen by real-life humans if the device with Siri is within listening distance. Almost all the people keep their phones very near to their body all the time and even during the sleep they keep their phone near the bed. It seems huge privacy concern for the users of smartphone. As of now there no way to opting out of having your data reviewed by the human reviewer. If Apple really concerns about the user privacy then must come out with the more options for the privacy concerned people.
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