> Furthermore how private do you think Siri is? Their privacy policy explicitly states they send transcripts of what you say to them. That cannot be disabled.

Ten minutes ago i set up a new Apple device and it not only asked me if I wanted to enable Siri, but whether I wanted to contribute audio clips to improve it. What, exactly, cannot be disabled?

You can trivially find it in the Settings app after setup, too: Privacy & Security -> Analytics & Improvements -> scroll to the Improve Siri & Dictation toggle that explains that it controls whether Apple can store and review audio of interactions with Siri and the dictation function. Plenty of other options to review in the vicinity too, since the first party privacy settings are basically all in the same place.

That is the option for the audio itself. The transcripts of the audio (you do know what transcripts are, right?) are always sent to apple as per their privacy policy.

"When you use Siri, your device will indicate in Siri Settings if the things you say are processed on your device and not sent to Siri servers. Otherwise, your voice inputs are sent to and processed on Siri servers. In all cases, transcripts of your interactions will be sent to Apple to process your requests."

It's pretty clear and not in dispute that your transcripts are always sent to Apple.

That’s because Siri doesn’t run on-device - phones like the iPhone 6 can’t run that level of analysis. They “collect transcripts” insofar as they need to process your request.

Nonetheless, Siri is trivial to disable altogether.

Yeah if you asked the average person on the sheet (e.g. you) if they thought Siri was 100% private, they'd say yes because Apple has mislead them and said it is. That's the point. Apple says everything is private but then secretly collects data via their privacy policies.

That's the problem. These AI features may be "free" but is there an option to disable them system wide from rummaging through all your data and building a profile in order to be helpful? If not I won't update. And I mean one tickbox not a separate switch for every app and feature like siri has making it nearly impossible to disable