Apple denied committing Siri privacy violations and detailed its user data protection guardrails, days after settling a class lawsuit around the technology for $95 million.

The iPhone maker agreed to the payout last week after a 2019 class action lawsuit, which alleged Apple’s voice-activated virtual assistant Siri recorded private conversations and sold user data to third parties.  

In a statement, Apple clarified that Siri data has never been disclosed to advertisers, used to create marketing profiles, nor sold “to anyone for any purpose”.

The company explained that user requests are processed on-device using neural engines for many Siri interactions, minimising the transmission of data to Apple servers. However, when requests require input from Apple servers, user data is apparently anonymised through random identifiers to prevent its association with individual accounts.

Additionally, the company claimed its Private Cloud Compute technology allows Siri to access larger models for Apple Intelligence requests without storing or exposing user data.

Apple highlighted that audio recordings of Siri interactions are only retained if users opt-in to improve Siri functionality, claiming it as the “most private digital assistant”.

The vendor reiterated, “We believe privacy is a fundamental human right and we will continue our relentless focus on designing our products and services to protect it.”

Siri rival Google Assistant was hit with a similar lawsuit alleging privacy breaches and mishandling of user audio recordings in 2021.