(Reuters) – Apple (NASDAQ: ) clarified on Wednesday that it has never sold data collected by its Siri voice assistant or used it to create marketing profiles, just days after settling a case in which it faced such allegations.
The iPhone maker last week paid $95 million to settle a class-action lawsuit in which plaintiffs alleged it routinely recorded their private conversations after they inadvertently activated Siri and disclosed those conversations to third parties such as advertisers.
Voice assistants typically respond when people use “hot words” like “Hey, Siri.”
The company denied those claims and did not acknowledge them in its settlement last week, in which tens of millions of Apple customers can receive up to $20 per Siri-enabled device, such as iPhones and Apple Watches.
“Apple has never used Siri data to create marketing profiles, never made it available for advertising, and never sold it to anyone for any purpose,” Apple said Wednesday.
Apple released a statement after social media users and commentators interpreted the settlement as confirmation that the allegations were true.
In a statement, the Cupertino, California-based company said that certain features require real-time input from Apple’s servers and only in such cases does Siri use as little data as possible to deliver an accurate result.
“Apple does not retain audio recordings of Siri interactions unless users specifically choose to help improve Siri, and even then the recordings are used solely for that purpose,” Apple said, adding that it will continue to develop technologies to make Siri even more private.
A similar lawsuit on behalf of users of Google’s (NASDAQ: ) voice assistant is pending in federal court in San Jose, California. The plaintiffs are represented by the same law firms as in the Apple case.
