Mikey Campbell for AppleInsider:
Following Apple’s decision to temporarily halt Siri grading as it evaluates the program’s privacy safeguards, Amazon and Google this week followed suit and updated their respective policies on human reviews of recorded voice assistant audio.
Google today confirmed that it recently “paused” human reviews of Google Assistant queries worldwide… Google didn’t say when it will resume human reviews of Google Assistant recordings. However, Google was ordered by German authorities to stop human evaluations of Google Assistant queries for at least three months.
Amazon.com Inc. will let Alexa users opt out of human review of their voice recordings, a move that follows criticism that the program violated customers’ privacy.
A new policy took effect Friday that allows customers, through an option in the settings menu of the Alexa smartphone app, to remove their recordings from a pool that could be analyzed by Amazon employees and contract workers, a spokeswoman for the Seattle company said. It follows similar moves by Apple Inc. and Google.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple leads. All others follow. As usual.™
Apple’s statement on the matter: “We are committed to delivering a great Siri experience while protecting user privacy. While we conduct a thorough review, we are suspending Siri grading globally. Additionally, as part of a future software update, users will have the ability to choose to participate in grading.”