Apple to no longer keep default recording of Siri requests

Apple on Wednesday apologized for listening to audio recordings of some users’ conversations with Siri, the company’s virtual assistant.

The tech giant said that it will stop retaining a sample of audio recordings of the requests users make to Siri.

“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 said in a blog post.

{mosads}The company will now let users opt in to having requests recorded, and seek to minimize the amount of human review of audio collected, Apple said. The company also said it will continue to keep a computer-generated transcript of Siri requests.

The move comes a month after The Guardian detailed how contractors listened to stored recordings as part of a quality control program to determine if Siri was successfully completing requests. Those contractors regularly heard sensitive and private details, the Guardian noted.

Apple paused the Siri grading program in the wake of the report.

The company said Wednesday that it will resume that program after the changes being rolled out are fully implemented.

Increased scrutiny on Silicon Valley companies’ data privacy policies has led to similar changes throughout the tech industry.

Google also recently paused reviews of audio recordings from its Google assistant service.

–This report was updated at 1:52 p.m.