Apple drops idea of ​​allowing users use Siri to make purchases

According to the latest report, Apple wanted to try three years ago to let users use the Siri voice assistant to help them buy apps and subscription services, similar to how users use Amazon Alexa placed orders online, but they eventually dropped the idea due to privacy concerns.

The report emphasizes that Apple engineers strictly limit how users can use Apple services, such as Apple TV+ engineers can’t analyze how customers see one content from another content, and there is no way to make appropriate algorithmic recommendations. Therefore, Apple’s strict privacy policy also makes it more difficult for engineers to directly access or use the data.

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Moreover, sources believe that this has raised concerns that Apple’s strict privacy protection policies are killing Apple’s services, making it more difficult to compete with companies such as Google.

It is also worth noting in the report that in 2019, Apple explored the possibility of letting users use Siri to make purchases, but as the project was further developed, the team responsible for this work had to do so due to privacy concerns. abandoned this plan.

Due to privacy restrictions, some highly anticipated features have never been mentioned by Apple, especially the app sideloading feature that Apple has tightly held. In 2019, Apple employees explored whether customers would be able to purchase apps and other online services with their Siri voice, similar to how they buy products through Amazon’s Alexa.

According to a person with direct knowledge of the project. That effort stalled in part because Siri was unable to tie a user’s Apple ID to a voice request. He revealed that the Apple team in charge of the project could not find any other reliable way to implement user authentication in order to charge them.

This isn’t the first time Apple’s privacy policy has reportedly restricted the innovative behavior of its engineers. The engineers and staff who previously worked on Siri, the App Store, and even the Apple Card often had to “find creative or expensive ways to compensate for data limitations.”

One approach Apple engineers came up with is Differential Privacy (Privacy Differentiation), which Craig Federighi first demonstrated at WWDC 2016. Apple describes it as “knowing the user community without knowing someone in the community. The ‘information shared with Apple’ can be transformed before Apple takes the data away so that Apple can never replicate the real data”.

However, despite different privacy protections and Apple’s attempts to collect as much user data as possible, engineers remain apprehensive and limited about what they can and cannot do, the report noted.

Those efforts and others have had limited or mixed results, according to a former Apple employee. New hires can have a hard time adjusting to Apple’s strict privacy culture, which comes straight from CEO Tim Cook and other senior vice presidents. Apple’s intention to reduce its data collection is to worry that employees may try to steal information for improper reasons, or that hackers may destroy the data.

The report also revealed privacy concerns in the development of Apple’s Apple Watch. Features like Raise to Speak allow users to talk to Siri by simply raising their wrist instead of saying “Hey Siri,” some of those involved in the project said. But initially, such features were often opposed due to concerns about data collection from microphones and accelerometers.

(via)