Apple denies using Siri data for marketing, cites privacy focus

Apple says it has never used Siri data to create marketing profiles, sold it to anyone for advertising, or even shared it with third parties. The latest statement is meant to reaffirm its unwavering commitment to keeping Siri conversations private.

A recent settlement of $95 million that Apple agreed to over an issue where human contractors were assigned to review anonymized recordings of Siri interactions sparked controversy with regard to Siri data usage. That settlement came as the result of a report that surfaced in 2019 by The Guardian, however, and without evidence of Siri data being sold to market to end-users.

As said, Apple has directly denied this myth, stating, "Apple has never used Siri data to build marketing profiles, never made it available for advertising, and never sold it to anyone for any purpose." Moreover, the company confirms its commitment to developing new technologies that will further improve Siri's privacy, thus positioning itself as "an advocate for user data security."

However, Apple's stand on the usage of Siri data is not different from that of other major technology companies, such as Meta (or Facebook), which have faced similar rumors and conspiracy theories over time. In the case of Facebook, the company has denied using microphone data for ad targeting, with founder Mark Zuckerberg addressing the issue directly during congressional hearings.

While Apple and others may not use voice data themselves to target ads specifically, the reality is that advertisers use a slew of other data points, such as location tracking, browsing history, and purchase habits, to serve targeted content.

To address these, Apple rolled out strict privacy in which random identifiers, instead of personal data, track Siri data in its processing. The company furthered this by bringing the privacy and security features of the iPhone to the cloud with Private Cloud Compute. These have ensured that such user data does not get stored or sent to Apple when one is running Siri and getting outputs.