French prosecutors have launched an investigation into how Apple collected and used audio recordings of interactions with its Siri voice assistant, following a complaint from the human rights organization Ligue des droits de l’Homme and testimony from whistleblower Thomas Le Bonniec, a former Apple contractor.
French prosecutors have launched an investigation into how Apple collected and used audio recordings of interactions with its Siri voice assistant, following a complaint from the human rights organization Ligue des droits de l’Homme and testimony from whistleblower Thomas Le Bonniec, a former Apple contractor.
Politico reports on the start of the case. According to the publication, it concerns a practice where fragments of user requests were transferred to contractors for decoding to «improve the quality» of Siri. Le Bonniec claims that the recordings included intimate conversations and confidential data that could potentially identify people. The prosecutor’s office wants to find out the scale of the collection, the number of people involved and the places where the recordings were stored. Later, the opening of the case was confirmed by Reuters.
Apple’s position in France remains unchanged: the company does not use Siri data for advertising, does not sell it and «does not create marketing profiles» based on these recordings. At the corporate level, Apple stated back in 2019 that it does not store audio of interactions with Siri by default, and from 2025 it further emphasized: audio is stored only with the user’s explicit consent in the «Help improve Siri» settings (participation can be withdrawn at any time). The texts of requests may be processed to execute commands.
Le Bonniec chose the path to the courts after unsuccessful appeals to data protection regulators — the French CNIL and the Irish DPC, which closed the case in 2022 without opening an investigation. The materials also mention a class action lawsuit in France, inspired by an American class action; in the US, Apple agreed to a $95 million settlement in December 2024, without admitting violations.
Market reaction has been muted so far. Apple shares were down slightly (about half a percent) in morning trading as investors assess the legal risks and potential implications for data processing practices in the EU.
The French investigation must answer key questions: how many records have been collected since 2014, how many users were affected, where exactly the data is stored and who had access to it. If prosecutors see signs of violations — from lack of information to insufficient anonymization — the companies can threaten procedural regulations and fines. For the market, this is another test of the transparency of voice services’ «training»: collecting real-life speech examples is useful for the quality of the assistant’s response, but in the EU such collection should only take place under clear rules on consent, minimization and data protection.
The Siri saga dates back to 2019, when it was revealed that contractors were listening to some of the audio to assess the quality of recognition. Apple changed the default settings and introduced a clearer opt-in for saving audio. Today’s French investigation is actually examining whether past practices are consistent with the letter of European law and how the company adheres to its own stated privacy policies.
Previously, dev.ua wrote about how the White House believes that the appearance of The Atlantic editor in a closed chat in Signal occurred through Siri.
