Apple apologizes for listening to Siri recordings

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 sample 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.

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.