Apple says Siri isn’t sending your conversations to advertisers

The section specifically responding to the rumors reads:

Apple has never used Siri data to build marketing profiles, never made it available for advertising, and never sold it to anyone for any purpose. We are constantly developing technology to make Siri even more private, and we will continue to do so.

After The of the Guardian report in 2019, Apple apologized and changed their policyMaking it the default setting to not keep audio recordings from Siri interactions and saying that for users who choose to share recordings, those recordings will not be shared with third-party contractors.

However, reports on the establishment noted that in previous papers like this one from 2021Some of the plaintiffs claimed that after mentioning brand names such as “Olive Garden”, “Easton bats”, “Pit Viper sunglasses” and “Air Jordans”, they were served advertisements for the corresponding products, which they attributed to Siri data.

Apple’s statement tonight says it “does not keep audio recordings of Siri interactions unless users explicitly opt in to help improve Siri, and even then, the recordings are used only for that purpose. Users can easily opt-out at any time.”

Facebook has responded to similar theories in 2014 and 2016 before Mark Zuckerberg he addressed it directlysaying “no” to the question while being grilled by Congress over the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018.

So, if Apple (and Facebook, Google, etc.) are telling the truth, why would you see an ad later for something you just talked about?

There are other explanations, and attempts to verify the rumors include an investigation in 2018 which found no evidence of microphone spying, but found that some apps secretly record user activity on the screen that they forward to third parties.