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"They all do" ... my understanding is that this expressly does not happen with HomePod conversations.

by rwc 7y ago

inerte 7y ago
So I meant "they" in the sense of the companies, not necessarily the home devices. Sorry about the confusion. I know 100% that it happens with Siri. If Apple is excluding HomePod conversations from Siri's dataset, that I don't know.
- danieldk 7y ago
  Do you have a source for human annotation of Siri recordings? Do they use subcontractors like Google?
  - inerte 7y ago
    First hand source, it was the first job several of my Brazilian friends (or their spouses) got when they relocated to the Bay Area. They use companies like Moravia or Welocalize. Take a look at some of the job posts from my link above.
saagarjha 7y ago
As far as I am aware, Siri's audio retention policy is up to two years.
mcv 7y ago
I'm not familiar with HomePod, but if I ever get an Alexa/Siri kind of assistant, it will be one that analyses my voice locally rather than sending it to the cloud. Ah, who am I kidding? I just bought a new Android phone, which probably does exactly the same thing. Time to install LineageOS on it, I guess.
judge2020 7y ago
Apple still stores the audio, but they said they can't allow you to download/GDPR request your recordings (like Amazon and Google allow you to do) since they're not associated with your Apple ID whatsoever. I wouldn't be surprised if they also human-review some audio.
jammygit 7y ago
“... In some cases, teams use the audio of users’ voice requests as training data—all anonymized, Apple says. > We leave out identifiers to avoid tying utterances to specific users, so we can do a lot of machine learning and a lot of things in the cloud without having to know that it came from [the user],” Joswiak said. In other words, Siri can learn things about users as a whole without tapping into individuals’ personal data. > Apple holds on to six months’ worth of the user voice recordings to teach the voice recognition engine to better understand the user > After that six months, Apple saves another copy of the recordings, sans user ID, for use in improving Siri, and these recordings can be kept for up to two years. > The training happens on Apple’s servers, but the models only start practicing what they’ve learned when they’ve been deployed to your device. > Once on the device, the models begin to run computations on things you type or tap into your device, or on things that are seen in the device’s camera, heard through the microphone, or sensed by the device’s sensors. Over time, this creates a massive pile of personal data on the device, as much as 200MB worth. https://www.fastcompany.com/40443055/apple-explains-how-its-making-siri-smart-without-endangering-user-privacy https://www.fastcompany.com/40443055/apple-explains-how-its-...

"They all do" ... my understanding is that this expressly does not happen with HomePod conversations.

by rwc 7y ago

"They all do" ... my understanding is that this expressly does not happen with HomePod conversations.

So I meant "they" in the sense of the companies, not necessarily the home devices. Sorry about the confusion. I know 100% that it happens with Siri. If Apple is excluding HomePod conversations from Siri's dataset, that I don't know.

danieldk 7y ago
Do you have a source for human annotation of Siri recordings? Do they use subcontractors like Google?
- inerte 7y ago
  First hand source, it was the first job several of my Brazilian friends (or their spouses) got when they relocated to the Bay Area. They use companies like Moravia or Welocalize. Take a look at some of the job posts from my link above.

saagarjha 7y ago

As far as I am aware, Siri's audio retention policy is up to two years.

mcv 7y ago

I'm not familiar with HomePod, but if I ever get an Alexa/Siri kind of assistant, it will be one that analyses my voice locally rather than sending it to the cloud. Ah, who am I kidding? I just bought a new Android phone, which probably does exactly the same thing. Time to install LineageOS on it, I guess.

judge2020 7y ago

Apple still stores the audio, but they said they can't allow you to download/GDPR request your recordings (like Amazon and Google allow you to do) since they're not associated with your Apple ID whatsoever. I wouldn't be surprised if they also human-review some audio.

jammygit 7y ago

“... In some cases, teams use the audio of users’ voice requests as training data—all anonymized, Apple says. > We leave out identifiers to avoid tying utterances to specific users, so we can do a lot of machine learning and a lot of things in the cloud without having to know that it came from [the user],” Joswiak said. In other words, Siri can learn things about users as a whole without tapping into individuals’ personal data. > Apple holds on to six months’ worth of the user voice recordings to teach the voice recognition engine to better understand the user > After that six months, Apple saves another copy of the recordings, sans user ID, for use in improving Siri, and these recordings can be kept for up to two years. > The training happens on Apple’s servers, but the models only start practicing what they’ve learned when they’ve been deployed to your device. > Once on the device, the models begin to run computations on things you type or tap into your device, or on things that are seen in the device’s camera, heard through the microphone, or sensed by the device’s sensors. Over time, this creates a massive pile of personal data on the device, as much as 200MB worth. https://www.fastcompany.com/40443055/apple-explains-how-its-making-siri-smart-without-endangering-user-privacy https://www.fastcompany.com/40443055/apple-explains-how-its-...