Last week a report by The Guardian dug into a program where third-party contractors listened in to anonymized recordings of Apple users asking Siri questions to judge the assistant’s responses, and now Apple has shut it down. In a statement to TechCrunch, the company said that while it conducts a “thorough” review, it’s suspending the program globally.
Apple is going to review the process that’s currently used, where workers listen to anonymized Siri recordings to determine whether Siri is hearing questions correctly or being activated on accident.
Apple in the future also plans to release a software update that will let Siri users opt out of having their Siri queries included in this evaluation process, called grading.
“We are committed to delivering a great Siri experience while protecting user privacy,” Apple said in a statement to TechCrunch. “While we conduct a thorough review, we are suspending Siri grading globally. Additionally, as part of a future software update, users will have the ability to choose to participate in grading.”
When The Guardian report came out, Apple confirmed that a small number of anonymized Siri requests are analyzed for the purpose of improving Siri and dictation. While Apple anonymizes Siri data that’s evaluated for quality control and Siri improvement, its current privacy policy and security documents do not explicitly mention human oversight.
