Apple announced plans to resume quality control reviews of Siri interactions in the coming months, but noted the programme will now require opt-in consent from users.

The company suspended Siri assessments earlier this month, after users expressed outrage that recordings of audio interactions with the voice assistant were used for analysis without their knowledge. Amazon and Google came under fire for running similar programmes for their respective voice assistants.

Apple apologised for the misstep, noting in a press release an internal review of its practices found “we haven’t been fully living up to our high ideals” around user privacy.

Though the company said it plans to reinstate the grading system, it noted it will no longer store recordings of Siri interactions by default. Going forward, Apple said only audio samples from users who opt-in to participate will be used for the programme and only Apple employees will have access to the recordings.

Indeed, The Guardian reported Apple already laid off more than 300 contractors who were involved in the assessment project.

“We hope that many people will choose to help Siri get better, knowing that Apple respects their data and has strong privacy controls in place… Our team will work to delete any recording which is determined to be an inadvertent trigger of Siri.”