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And the other thing is, for all that listening, Siri still hasn't gotten any smarter. Apple snagged a Google AI chief over a year ago and Siri is still dumb as s#@! I ask Google mini anything important.

Weird Google is dumb as s#@! for me. It once said it couldn't find any music titled "Children of the corn syrup", At least Google was honest, I bet there is no music like that. We sometimes make a game of asking google questions and listening to the dumb as s#@! answers.

Honestly, none are better than the others, they are all annoying to use, except for brief, simple queries.
 
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The contractor says the recordings are accompanied by contact details, and Apple says they are not.

So either Apple is lying, or the contractor is lying. If it’s the former, Apple just risked their entire reputation for privacy. If it’s the latter, then the entire article should be disregarded as potentially false.
 
Lol would love to see what users defending Apple here had to say when MacRumors posted about Amazon and Google employees listening in.

So basically Apple does exactly what Amazon and Google does- listen. Whodathunk the only way to improve recognition is to have a human grade it.

Except it’s not the same so there’s that.
 
I think the main point is Google and Amazon seem to be unfairly criticized that humans are listening. That is their main criticism. Apple is not immune to this. Basically, what happened to Google a few weeks back can happen to Apple, too. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/11/google-admits-leaked-private-voice-conversations.html

Previous reports about Google and Amazon seem to be a bit different because identifying info was included with voice recordings, while Apple says it strips all of that info. It's hard to judge with information from a single contractor -- the other reports were more thorough and referenced multiple employees. What happened with the leaked voice conversations could certainly happen to Apple, though. Always a risk with humans listening.
 
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if you think that, you are not paying attention. I would like to know why the contractor is being so cagey. is location attributed to Appleid, phone number, or other identifying info? Apple says no, contractor says (well we don't know what he says, because he doesn't actually say it). Is the customer info perhaps just names that people might say? What is app data? Let's get enough facts to actually draw a conclusion, before we draw a conclusion.
The conclusion is, just like Google, Apple listens in. I'm of the understanding that contact details are from conversation, exactly how the rogue Google Employee identified people from the recordings he leaked. I don't think actual details are there- they're anonymized with Google too, but the fact is Apple does not go out of their way to say Humans are listening to improve it, where as Google does. In an age where Apple is promoting privacy, they lack transparency.
 
There will be a Rene Ritchie video defending this soon. If it were Google/Facebook, he'd go *******.

He'll either defend it or discredit the source; it'll be one of the two.

While I do like Rene Ritchie -- he seems like a good guy -- I think in the long run, he'll begin to erode away his credibility in the eyes of his readers/viewers if he continues in the self-appointed defense-against-mass-hysteria-resulting-from-fake-news role.

He needs to become more balanced, nuanced, and to develop an aesthetic and functional appreciation that is not predicated solely on what Apple did and does.

He also has to stop writing how people speak and speaking how people write.
 
I see absolutely no reason to have a home pod, google or Alexa device period. What makes these things so interesting to people. Are they so lonely they need a box to talk to? I can play my own music and search the internet already
I don't think people are buying these because they're lonely or they can't do things themselves... it's a matter of convenience.

Just because you don't need or want it doesn't mean there's not a market for it. The biggest tech companies, including Apple, seem to think this is worth investing in.
 
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A friend of a friend of mine (lets go with that story) dated one of these contractors and they said the same thing.

I really don't care.

Really? A friend of a friend of mine dated one two and he said Apple doesn’t do this ever. Hmmm, who to believe
 
But....but...but Google and Alexa.

It’ll be interesting to see how this is spun by the usual defenders.

How should this be spun? I have trouble believing exact locations are used and figured someone listens to improve Siri recordings not to mention the beta transcripts of voicemails. I have little faith in the details of this report.
 
I don't understand what people think. You installed something that listens in your home. It is computerized and makes mistakes. You want the computer to get better, so there have to be humans fixing mistakes by correcting the algorithms. The only way they can do this is by listening. There will be accidental activations.

I'm seriously confused about why this is a big deal. Can people simply not put 2 and 2 together? There's nothing unusual or unexpected here.

The only thing concerning is that people are getting the location / contact information, but this sounds more like a rumor than actual information. Is the location an address, a city, a state? Is the contact information a name, a phone number, or some anonymous key that cannot be traced back? This would be a big deal if someone would going on record saying they had the exact address and the name of the person talking about a drug deal. Yet, the Guardian article doesn't mention any specifics. I wonder why.

This reads like crappy reporting with lots of innuendo and no actual facts.
 
How stupid. Apple is very up front about their practice, so it's not "whistleblowing" since there's no secret here. If anything the worst part of this article is the idiotic complain that someone who SAYS THEIR INFO IN THE RECORDING is having this info disclosed. If I record my address on a cassette tape and give it to someone with a walkman, sony didn't disclose anything. I did.
 
Who are the usual defenders?

It's going to be interesting to further watch the mental gymnastics of the Apple cult go crazy trying to reconcile this with Google and Amazon. Folks in this forum are definitely more down to earth then some of the others I've been to, I could actually read the replies in here and laugh! I'd say the hard core folks in those forums could be "the usual", at least by my definition.
 
Doesn’t matter if what the contractor says is true or false, what matters is that humans are listening and human beings have the potential to abuse the personal info they hear.
 
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No matter how much privacy is touted by companies, including Apple, it is difficult to trust any of them. Don't let any company have a spy in your house. Period.

I'm leaning towards not believing and trusting this "whistleblower". Seems like they are determined to undermine Apple's reputation. How can Apple outright deny what the whistleblower is claiming in terms of user location, etc. if it's not the truth? I find it very hard to believe both can be right, or that Apple is lying. Could it be a technical glitch they are not aware of?
 
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