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

[MacRumors]

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.

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.

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

 

[primarycolors]

Waiting for the obligatory 500 comments connecting this to surveillance and CSAM ?

 

[HiRez]

I wonder how this bug was even discovered. I imagine all the reviewers would just assume anything they get has been approved. And users probably have no way of knowing what gets sent.

 

[TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️]

For the time being, I'm not trusting Siri. It has lost my trust.

Siri is on time-out.

 

[applicious84]

They only noticed because I was telling Siri mean things about Tim Cook

 

[Jamison7]

Siri, tell the CCP I said I'm sorry.

 

[Wildkraut]

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.

 

[canadianreader]

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.

 

[Wildkraut]

For the time being, I'm not trusting Siri. It has lost my trust.

Siri is on time-out.

Sadly Siri is tied to carplay, else i would ditch that crapy cyberchick, too.

 

[canadianreader]

Sadly Siri is tied to carplay, else i would ditch that crapy cyberchick, too.

Trading privacy and security for convenience.

 

[Wildkraut]

Trading privacy and security for convenience.

Sadly yes, driving my car would be very boring and inconvenient without GoogleMaps and Spotify.

 

[visualseed]

Waiting for the obligatory 500 comments connecting this to surveillance and CSAM 😆

There is not a direct surveillance issue, but it does go to show that the argument that people could opt out of on-device CSAM scanning by not enabling iCould Photos is flawed.

 

[Naraxus]

Rather surprised they fixed this. After all Apple is no longer the company that vociferously claimed to be all about "privacy & security". Not that they ever did.

 

[coolfactor]

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? 🤭

 

[coolfactor]

There is not a direct surveillance issue, but it does go to show that the argument that people could opt out of on-device CSAM scanning by not enabling iCould Photos is flawed.

Apple and Oranges.

This opt-out toggle was added *after* the feature existing to submit Siri recordings to Apple. It's likely that one piece of the software wasn't correctly updated to recognize and respect this opt-out toggle, hence the bug. Just a theory.

The CSAM process, however, is different. It's brand new, built from scratch, not pieced together over time. Your argument is valid, though, as they bolt on more features onto CASM... where new features may not work correctly in every scenario.

 

[ghanwani]

This is sad.

 

[TMRJIJ]

I wonder what made Apple reveal this bug was happening in the first place. Did they think people would thank them?

 

[sorgo †]

“Siri” backwards is “iris”

 

[huge_apple_fangirl]

I completely stopped using Siri after the whole “we listen to you recordings” thing. Haven’t missed it either. It would be nice if Apple used the data they’ve collected without our consent to actually make Siri intelligent. Seems like they’ve basically given up ion it at this point.

 

[pdaholic]

Don’t worry everybody…even if Siri was recording us, there’s about a 90% chance she has no idea what we were saying.

 

[iZac]

On rare occasions my iPhone activates "Voice Control" even though I disabled absolutely everything related

 

[mi7chy]

Uh huh. Must be same bug that remotely turns on my iPad Pro that I keep sliding to turn off.

 

[t0pher]

Waiting for the obligatory 500 comments connecting this to surveillance and CSAM ?

No one can say it can’t unintentionally activate.

 

[cyanite]

I wonder what made Apple reveal this bug was happening in the first place. Did they think people would thank them?

Because it’s the responsible thing to do.

 

[Playfoot]

Keep in mind, I am certainly not a software engineer, however, I have said for years that IT/software/tech et al seem to get a free pass on the excuse of "this is so complex". So many of these issues to me are the same as if brakes did not work on cars, airbags did or didn't deploy when needed, medicine had adverse side effects and more.

In general Tech needs to be held much more accountable.....