Apple Faces French Investigation over Siri Voice Recordings (www.bloomberg.com)

French authorities have opened an investigation into Apple’s handling of Siri voice recordings, probing whether the company’s collection, storage and use of audio data comply with French data-protection rules. The action follows broader scrutiny of voice assistants worldwide after revelations that some vendors used human reviewers to transcribe and label user voice snippets. Regulators are seeking details about how recordings are collected (e.g., always-on wake-word vs. accidental triggers), how long they’re retained, whether human reviewers can access identifiable audio, and what choices and disclosures users were given. This matters to AI/ML practitioners because voice data is a key training signal for speech-recognition and assistant models, but also a high‑risk personal data category under GDPR. The probe underscores technical and governance trade-offs: centralized cloud labeling improves model quality but raises privacy, consent, and minimization concerns; alternatives include stronger anonymization, on-device processing, cohort-based aggregation, differential-privacy techniques, and transparent opt‑in workflows. A regulatory finding could force changes to data‑collection pipelines, audit and logging practices, and documentation for lawful processing — setting precedent for how voice data can be used to train and audit conversational AI across the industry.