Apple says its contractors will stop listening to users through Siri

Apple Inc. said on Friday that the company would stop using contractors to listen in on users through Siri to grade the voice assistant's accuracy.

An Apple whistle-blower told The Guardian that contractors who were responsible for "grading" the accuracy of Siri regularly heard recordings of doctors' appointments, drug deals and couples having sex. Their job was to determine the trigger to activate Siri - if the user had actually said "Hey, Siri" or if it was something else, such as the sound of a zipper.

Apple announced that it is suspending global analysis of those voice recordings until it can thoroughly review the program. For future software updates and review, users will be able to opt-out.

"We are committed to delivering a great Siri experience while protecting user privacy," Apple said in a statement to The Guardian on Friday.

The data was used "to help Siri and dictation ... understand you better and recognize what you say," Apple told The Guardian. But this wasn't made clear to users in Apple's terms and conditions.

"There have been countless instances of recordings featuring private discussions between doctors and patients, business deals, seemingly criminal dealings, sexual encounters and so on," the Apple whistle-blower told The Guardian, highlighting the Apple Watch and HomePod smart speaker as especially prone to mistakes. "These recordings are accompanied by user data showing location, contact details, and app data."

In response, Apple said the recordings from users weren't matched up with their Apple IDs, and that the recordings only account for 1 percent of Siri activations and last for just a few seconds.