If Apple want to know how often I order fried chicken then I really couldn't care less....
But if your Docs find out...!!
Or even worse, his insurance company.
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Anonymized Siri Voice Clips Stored by Apple for Up to Two Years
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Or even worse, his insurance company.
Most of what what you are worried about is already available in the cloud (they already host some of your email and your entire device iCloud backup). Besides, storing a raw voice clip with no identifier to you is not an efficient way to snoop on somebody. If they reverse/break the unique identifier to ID you, they would be liable of breaking the agreement of anonymized data. After 6 months there isn't even a key to link clips to the same user. If they didn't care about the agreement, the would just grab your SMS, emails and calendar directly.
There needs to be a balance of allowing companies to collect research data, and protecting users. Given the nature of voice recognition services, this seems to be a fair arrangement.
I find it quite hypocritical that many of you asking "so what's the big deal if they don't store user info along with the recording", while lots of discussions here are condemning Google when they do the same.
Having said that, finally found some use for Siri and have some fun with it!
Having said that, finally found some use for Siri and have some fun with it!
So, all you guys complain about Siris accuracy and request times, right? Well, here ya go. You shouldn't have any problem with this.
You want to bitch and moan about how "bad" Siri is, and then you want to bitch and moan about the things that are necessary for Apple to improve Siri.
And I doubt Apple is alone in this. Use any other service involving voice of any kind, and you're likely to see similar things. How else are they going to improve it?
You want to bitch and moan about how "bad" Siri is, and then you want to bitch and moan about the things that are necessary for Apple to improve Siri.
And I doubt Apple is alone in this. Use any other service involving voice of any kind, and you're likely to see similar things. How else are they going to improve it?
Voice recognition is based on statistical analysis of voice samples, the more samples you have the better your voice recognition system can be made to work. All voice recognition systems work like this and need a significant sample set in order to work.
You're right. With all phone calls and emails being monitored by our employers and government; and the telecoms, Google, and Facebook tracking our every move, why would there be specific concern about Siri?
I suppose, if Siri replies with "I found two contacts for 'Honey'. did you mean 'Honey-Wife' or 'Honey-On the side'?"
Personally I think it's great, especially when some dolt asks Siri "How do I make explosives with common household materials."
It is only hypocritical if the same person says two different things. However, there are also facts - if you want to have voice recognition, you will have to deal with companies collecting your data, because that's how they make it work in the first place. Maybe in 20 years there will be enough data to make any data collection superfluous. Then again, the language changes all the time.
Absolutely. It's the same with translation.
Old-school algorithms tried to substitute words and did some basic grammar correction, but the results weren't great and it's awfully difficult to do it well.
The new way to do this is with Big Data - for example, Google Translate now works by searching through enormous datasets of documents and recognised translations to statistically determine the best translation. These results end up being a lot better, and can easily adapt and improve with more and better data.
Voice recognition works in the same way. You're trying to match a variable sample (the users spoken words) to a specific action. It needs a bank of samples and correct actions to try and match against (and the larger the better).
I'm less concerned with Apple doing this than Google doing this - Apple's business case for doing this stops at making the product better. They don't try and extract any additional revenue from that information itself. I'm not saying Google necessarily do that; but they would have much more of a business case.
Your unstated assumption is that this is the only way to improve Siri. Got any basis for that assumption?
Even better would be if we were required to have CCTV cameras in every room of our house! I mean, only somebody with something to hide would object to that, right?
/s
One thing people don't seem to realize is that in the United States most phone calls in a business of a certain size are recorded. Only a handful of states are 2 party states. So it's happening without your awareness already most likely. And another thing people don't realize is almost all voice recognition ultimately goes through Nuance. Nuance bought up most of the better speech recognition companies some years ago.
Having written software dealing with call center stuff before I can also tell you how most of these clips are likely handled: someone will do a QA on random recordings. Grade the meaning and accuracy of the response and those QA scores go to help the business improve their processes.
Having written software dealing with call center stuff before I can also tell you how most of these clips are likely handled: someone will do a QA on random recordings. Grade the meaning and accuracy of the response and those QA scores go to help the business improve their processes.
It doesn't concern me what Apple does with it. It concerns me that the Government sees it as a resource for enforcement purposes. I should have the right to my papers and things. That includes assets like recordings of course.
Rocketman
Rocketman
I'm not important enough to worry about being tracked.
This is silly... the only value to Apple storing this is to have large databases of test cases. The last thing they want to know is what time I get up in the morning.
Nor do I.
But you'll notice all the posts minimalizing this because its Apple. If it was Google they'd be outraged.
Hypocrisy displayed by the faithful at its finest!
Yet Apple's free to turn on the mic or camera on my iDevice whenever they want. If anyone thinks otherwise they're only kidding themselves.
It's the risk we take by carrying what is essentially the best tracking device the Feds could ever ask for.
Paranoid? NOT at all.
Factual? ABSOLUTELY.
Welcome to technology circa 2013
Are seriously implying that having a large sample set of end to end real world test cases is NOT the best way to research Voice Recognition improvements? This tests the noise cancelation, the mic quality and the data rates. Not to mention factoring in actual usage patterns like how the phone is held and common background noises.
If you care so much about privacy, don't use server side services. EVER. That is not meant as a flippant response. Seriously, if you don't want a company to have certain information, don't send it to them.
