Ireland’s Data Protection Commission wants answers from Apple about why it let contractors listen to private Siri recordings. The data protection watchdog is looking into whether Apple’s GDPR privacy obligations.
Should Apple be found guilty, it could be fined up to 20 million euros ($22 million) or 4% of its annual global turnover, whichever is higher.
A revamp of Apple’s program that had people monitoring Siri voice commands for quality control will soon ask users to opt-in first, and only Apple employees will be listening.
“We realize we haven’t been fully living up to our high ideals, and for that we apologize,” the company said in a statement.
Apple has laid off the contractors whose job it was to listen to Siri recordings to improve the quality of Apple’s voice assistant.
Contractors in Ireland had their fixed term contracts “abruptly terminated” this week. This followed Apple suspending the practice last month. During each shift, employees supposedly listened to 1,000 Siri recordings.
Microsoft has snapped up the former Siri boss, who left Apple earlier in May 2019.
Bill Stasior joined Apple in 2012, taking over control of the Siri team not long after it made its debut with the iPhone 4s. In his job at Microsoft, Stasior will be corporate vice president of technology.
Apple might be ready to agree to a truce with Spotify that would allow iOS users to control the rival music streaming service with Siri.
iPhone users have been unable to use Siri and Spotify together even though you can do it with Apple Music. Reports of the negotiations come as Apple is facing more intense scrutiny for anti-trust practices, with Spotify being one of the loudest dissenting voices.
A class action lawsuit has been proposed to prevent Apple from recording Siri commands without users’ express consent. And the plaintiffs want restitution, of course.
Apple admits it made recordings of people talking to the Siri voice-control system to improve the system. As part of the process, some of these were listened to by humans.
Apple wants you to know that, at least for now, it has stopped listening to Siri queries made by users. It’s the right move to make. But it’s the unnecessary result of a backlash Apple brought upon itself.
The Siri eavesdropping controversy perfectly illustrates why Apple needs to be more transparent with users — even if that means sacrificing some ease of use.
Apple has stopped its process of listening to a certain portion of Siri recordings for “grading” purposes.
This is the result of a backlash against the privacy-oriented company, after news broke that Apple shares recordings made by Siri with third-party contractors.
Apple shares recordings made by Siri with third-party contractors, according to a recent report. The goal is to improve Siri’s responses, but the fact is, you probably didn’t know that this was happening — and almost certainly want it to stop.
Today, I will show you how to prevent these diagnostic recordings from going to Apple. The good news? You can do it using only Apple’s tools. The bad news is that you’ll have to get your hands dirty in the process.
Developers received a fresh batch of new beta builds this morning in the form of iOS 13 beta 5. Apple seeded the new software updates just under two weeks after the last set of betas came out, bringing fresh changes to mouse support on iPad, smaller quick action menus and tons of bug fixes.
It’s been widely reported that voice control systems like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and Apple Siri use people in their quality-improvement process, not just algorithms. But Siri and others might be accidentally overhearing to what we say more than we realize, and humans in the loop are getting an earful.
A new report warns that Apple contractors have heard “confidential medical information, drug deals, and recordings of couples having sex.”
We already know that Apple has completely made over the Reminders app in iOS 13, adding a new, more powerful layout, and some excellent quick-entry tools so you don’t have to tap the screen like a million times just to remember to take out the trash when you get home.
But Reminders has also gotten its virtual claws deeper into the rest of iOS. Today we’ll see two great integrations that you might not have heard about yet.
Apple’s Calendar app finally comes to CarPlay in iOS 13. It might not look like much, but it makes getting to meetings and events super-simple.
Here’s how the Calendar app works — and how you’ll use its killer feature.
iOS 13 doesn’t just mean big improvements for your iPhone. Apple is making some pretty significant enhancements to CarPlay, too, including a brand-new dashboard and better apps.
Some of these great new CarPlay features are long overdue. Here’s everything you can expect from Apple’s in-car platform in iOS 13.
The ability to use Siri to listen to live radio stations is up and running for HomePod users, along with people running the latest iOS 13 beta.
Apple announced the feature at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference, boasting support for iHeartRadio, TuneIn and Radio.com streaming radio. That means users can access more than 100,000 different stations using Apple’s AI assistant.
The mayor of Seattle confirmed today that Apple is making a major play to move into Amazon and Microsoft’s backyard.
During a press conference today, Mayor Jenny A. Durkan revealed that Apple plans to increase its expansion into Seattle by hiring an additional 2,000 employees in the next five years.
The first public beta of iOS 13 is finally available to public testers.
Apple launched iOS 13 public beta 1 and iPadOS public beta 1 this morning. The software gives everyone the opportunity to try out all the new features, like the system-wide Dark Mode that looks absolutely beautiful. However, you might not want to take the jump quite yet.
If you have a query about your prescription drugs, you’re better off asking Google Assistant than Siri or Amazon’s Alexa. That’s the conclusion of a new piece of research, published in the journal Nature Digital Medicine.
While you’re best off asking a human doctor, of course, the research was intended to see how accurate Google, Amazon and Apple’s AI assistants are at explaining the 50 most commonly prescribed medicines.
Watch out Amazon. Apple is moving into your neighborhood.
The iPhone-maker reportedly is set to lease a large office complex building in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood that is also the home Amazon’s HQ.
Craig Federighi, Apple’s VP of software, has suggested to a customer that Apple could correct an irritating UI element for Siri on iPad.
Apple user Juliano Rossi wrote Federighi about the way that the Siri interface takes up the entire iPad screen. This contrasts with Siri on the Mac, where Siri appears in a small popup window.
While Federighi doesn’t confirm that things will change, he does say that Apple will take the point into consideration.
One of the best features on Apple Music could soon make its way onto Spotify thanks to iOS 13.
Apple is finally making it possible for Spotify and other music, podcast and audio apps to use Siri. Not being able to integrate with HomePod or Siri were two of Spotify’s many complaints in a recent open letter slamming Apple. When iOS 13 comes out that will finally be possible.
Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference is just days away and it’s shaping up to be one of the most software-packed events in the company’s history.
New software for the iPhone, iPad, Mac and more will be shown off for the first time when Tim Cook takes the stage on June 3rd. Most of the event will be focused solely on Apple’s biggest software updates of the year, but there’s a chance we could see some new hardware too.
Maybe you’re one of the non-vocal majority that doesn’t mind the Touch Bar. Perhaps you even like it. And maybe, at the same time, you can’t see the point of Siri on the Mac.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could tailor your MacBook Pro just for you? A lovely, handy, beautiful Touch Bar, only without that dumbo Siri? Well, yes it would. Here’s how to remove Siri from the Macbook’s Touch Bar.
The last few weeks have been packed with rumors and leaks about what Apple may have in store for us with iOS 13 and macOS 10.15. With so much information coming out day after day, it’s hard to keep track of all the possible rumors.
Fortunately for you, we’ve compiled the full list of expected features coming this year to iOS and macOS. From dark mode to iPad updates, and new Mac apps to Siri improvements, here’s everything we are expecting (so far) in iOS 13 and macOS 10.15.
Siri may still be hopeless, but one thing it’s always been good at is setting alarms. In fact, I don’t use Siri much at all any more1, but for alarms and timers, I use it exclusively. Even with iOS 12’s great 3-D Touch timer widget, Siri is quicker.
Today we’ll see how to tell Siri to create an alarm, set a timer, how to edit an alarm, and how to delete one.
