Apple Intelligence Privacy Dark Patterns

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Style Pass

2024-08-05 19:00:07

After I got off the beta waitlist, I went to enable Apple Intelligence, and it wouldn’t let me do so without also enabling Siri. I don’t find Siri to be useful on my Macs and tend to restrict it to my iPhone to prevent accidentally triggering the wrong device. It also doesn’t seem to work well with Mac microphones—this time it failed three times to accept the training test phrase but then eventually let me continue, anyway.

Not only that, but it also forced me to enable sharing audio recordings with Apple. See how the Continue button is disabled until I select the (lone!) radio button:

See how it says that you can change the privacy setting later in System Settings? Well, you still can’t do so from the Apple Intelligence & Siri pane. There are a button and a help link that seem to relate to privacy:

but they don’t let me control whether Apple stores my audio, nor explain where to do that. The relevant setting is in System Settings ‣ Privacy & Security ‣ Analytics & Improvements ‣ Improve Siri & Dictation.