iOS 15 bug shared ‘a small portion’ of Siri recordings even after opt-out

When you upgrade your iPhone to iOS 15.4 (currently in beta) you’ll be greeted by a screen asking if you want to share recordings of your Siri requests with Apple to help improve the service. The recordings are pseudonymized so they can’t be associated with you specifically, but they’ll be heard by Apple employees who will use them to help make Siri better understand what you say and what you mean.

But…didn’t you already do this years ago? Yes, and if you’ve had your iPhone for a long time you may be wondering what has changed. Why are you being asked this again?

In short, it’s because Apple discovered an iOS 15 bug that caused Siri recordings to be shared with Apple even if the user had opted out—it only affected “a small number of users,” according to Apple. When Apple discovered the bug, it turned off the feature for many users in iOS 15.2 and set about deleting all the requests that had been inadvertently recorded.

Apple turned off the feature for “many users” in iOS 15.2 and fixed the bug, according to ZDnet. As of iOS 15.4 beta 2, Apple is re-enabling the feature for all users, and has to ask everyone again if they want to share their Siri recordings.

If you choose to share them, the recording of everything you say immediately after “Hey Siri” (or when you hold the side button on your iPhone) will be sent to Apple and may be used by teams who review and tag these requests to help improve Siri’s speech recognition and language understanding. All personal info is stripped from the recordings—it is associated with a unique randomized device ID that is not associated with your name, email address, Apple ID, or any other data Apple has about you.

If you choose not to share them, Siri recordings will never leave your device. Should you change your mind, you can change your response to opt-in or opt-out at any time but opening Settings > Privacy > Analytics & Improvements and flipping the Improve Siri & Dictation toggle.