iOS 15.4 Beta 2 Fixes Bug That Caused Some iPhones to Record Siri Interactions Even When Users Opted Out

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The second beta of iOS 15.4 addresses an iOS 15 bug that was allowing the iPhone to upload some Siri recordings to Apple even when users had previously opted out of doing so, Apple said in a statement to ZDNet.

improve siri dictation
Recordings were mistakenly kept for some users who disabled the option to share their ‌Siri‌ voice interactions or dictation with Apple for the purpose of improving the voice assistant. Apple told ZDNet that it turned off the setting for "many" ‌Siri‌ users in iOS 15.2, but iOS 15.4 apparently fixes the issue.

With iOS 15.2, we turned off the Improve Siri & Dictation setting for many Siri users while we fixed a bug introduced with iOS 15. This bug inadvertently enabled the setting for a small portion of devices. Since identifying the bug, we stopped reviewing and are deleting audio received from all affected devices.

Apple said that when the bug was initially identified, it stopped reviewing the audio from affected devices and deleted the accidental recordings, but there is no word on why the company did not inform users of this issue when it was first discovered or when the setting was disabled in iOS 15.2.

There is no word on how many recordings Apple accidentally collected nor who was affected.

When updating to iOS 15.4 beta 2, there is a setup screen that asks users to choose whether to Improve ‌Siri‌ & Dictation by sending Apple recordings. Opting out is meant to prevent Apple from collecting and reviewing recordings of ‌Siri‌ interactions.

Apple first introduced the toggle to disable ‌Siri‌ recordings in October 2019 with the launch of iOS 13.2. It was added after it was discovered that Apple hired contractors to listen to a small percentage of anonymized ‌Siri‌ recordings to evaluate ‌Siri‌'s responses with the purpose of improving reliability.

Some of those contractors complained that they regularly heard confidential details while listening to the audio recordings. In response, Apple temporarily suspended its ‌Siri‌ grading practices and added the opt-out feature and an option to delete all previously collected ‌Siri‌ recordings.

Related Forum: iOS 15

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Top Rated Comments

canadianreader Avatar
canadianreader
52 months ago

Waiting for the obligatory 500 comments connecting this to surveillance and CSAM ?
You'd never know how many other unfixed bugs that are floating around. Think camera and mic bugs or screen recording bugs etc.
Score: 16 Votes (Like | Disagree)
TheYayAreaLiving ?️ Avatar
TheYayAreaLiving ?️
52 months ago
For the time being, I'm not trusting Siri. It has lost my trust.

Siri is on time-out. :confused:
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Jamison7 Avatar
Jamison7
52 months ago
Siri, tell the CCP I said I'm sorry.
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)
pdaholic Avatar
pdaholic
52 months ago
Don’t worry everybody…even if Siri was recording us, there’s about a 90% chance she has no idea what we were saying.
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
coolfactor Avatar
coolfactor
52 months ago

No, but such heavy bugs should be fined with 10% of the worldwide yearly revenue, and they would start to pay more attention before releasing crap that insults users privacy. Yes, these kind of bugs shows up too often with Apple, very shady.

At least they ditched the “What’s on your iPhone, stay’s on your iPhone!“ campaign.
Well written! By someone that has NO idea how complex software is. ? Even when something is working perfectly in one scenario, it can misbehave unexpectedly in another scenario. Testing every possible scenario is humanly impossible. This is why bugs are quite often discovered in the real world (aka. after the public release).

I'm a software engineer and see this all the time. End users manage to reveal bugs that were completely unimaginable during development and internal testing. What really matters is how Apple responds to incidents. Transparency is key.

What is ironic about this is that so many people complain about Siri not understanding their commands, and yet how many of them disable Apple's ability to review and improve that process by opting out? ?
Score: 9 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Wildkraut Avatar
Wildkraut
52 months ago

Waiting for the obligatory 500 comments connecting this to surveillance and CSAM ?
No, but such heavy bugs should be fined with 10% of the worldwide yearly revenue, and they would start to pay more attention before releasing crap that insults users privacy. Yes, these kind of bugs shows up too often with Apple, very shady.

At least they ditched the “What’s on your iPhone, stay’s on your iPhone!“ campaign.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
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