Siri

Apple and Siri hit headlines at the start of the month as a report highlighted how Apple hired teams of contractors to listen and review audio clips from customer’s Siri interactions.

Apple responded by halting the Siri grading process. Ultimately, this put a whole host of people out of work. The Irish Examiner spoke to contractors in Cork who were impacted by the decision.

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There was something of a mystery report this week.

Apple and Spotify are reportedly in talks over potentially allowing Spotify users to control music playback with Siri […]

According to The Information, Spotify and Apple are discussing a “plan” that would “let iPhone users tell Siri to play songs, playlists, and albums with voice commands.” These conversations reportedly stem from new APIs in iOS 13 that make it possible for developers of audio apps to integrate with Siri.

As we noted, it’s unclear why that would require talks, as the SiriKit APIs will allow Spotify or anyone else to take advantage of Siri for music requests. However, there is one rather more radical possibility…

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Microsoft contractors are still listening to some requests made to its Cortana intelligent assistant, as well as some Skype calls.

The revelation follows decisions by Apple, Google, and Facebook to suspend their human review processes for now, and Amazon giving Alexa users the ability to opt-out…

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A report last month revealed that Apple had contractors listening to and grading Siri responses, which in turn meant that those contractors heard private conversations from users. Now, Apple has been hit with its first class-action over this practice.

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Home control system integration with Apple TV and Siri is one of the few features introduced in tvOS 12, and this week Crestron is releasing an update to its programmable touch screen remote to support the new feature.

Apple announced home control system integration last year at WWDC 2018 alongside Dolby Atmos support and new screen savers designed for Apple TV, although adoption of the smart home feature has been rather slow.

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Apple has announced in a statement that it is suspending the program which entailed human Apple contractors listening and grading a sample of Siri responses for quality control.

The company is conducting a thorough internal review of its Siri policies, and it will reinstate (a presumably different form of) Siri grading when it is finished. When Siri grading returns, users will be able to choose to opt-out of grading.

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A report yesterday from The Guardian placed Apple and Siri in the middle of privacy concerns over voice activated assistants. The report claimed that Apple contractors listen to Siri audio as part of its efforts to improve performance, and oftentimes hear sensitive conversations.

Apple defended the efforts in a statement, saying that “less than 1% of daily Siri activations” are used for grading. What do you think of this revelation?

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Mangrove Capital Partners is out this week with its Voice Tech Report for 2019. This annual report covers the growing adoption of voice assistants, and makes an interesting prediction for Siri in 2020.

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HomePod owners are taking to Twitter to complain that the Hey Siri feature is being activated by Apple’s new AirPods commercial.

When the guy in the Bounce ad says Hey Siri at the beginning and asks it to play him something new, HomePods are being triggered…

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The man who was for seven years head of Apple’s Siri efforts has said that virtual assistants don’t deliver on their promise.

Bill Stasior left Apple earlier this year, leaving the Siri team without a VP at the helm …

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Apple’s decision to make Siri’s voice female by default in the US and many other countries reinforces gender bias, claims a new United Nations report. The same complaint is levelled at Google Assistant, Amazon’s Alexa and Microsoft’s Cortana.

The problem with this, says the report, is that it ‘reflects and reinforces’ the idea that assistants – acting in a support role – are female …

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Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off on June 3rd. Last week, we shared exclusive details about iOS 13 and macOS 10.15. Today, we are sharing details about new features and APIs for developers that should be announced at the event, according to sources familiar with the development of Apple’s new operating systems.

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Apple Music subscribers can now control music playback on Sonos speakers using voice control through Amazon Alexa. The feature works in the US and UK on the Sonos One and Sonos Beam smart speakers, joining Amazon Echo speakers, based on the Apple Music skill in the Alexa app.

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