It's always educational to read the iPhone SLA whenever a new device or feature comes out. It often tells us how something works, along with Apple's background intentions.
For example, the iPhone 4S SLA has a new section. Underlining is mine:
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"Siri. If your iOS Device supports Siri, which includes the dictation feature, these features allow you to make requests, give commands and dictate text to your device using your voice.
When you use Siri, the things you say will be recorded and sent to Apple to process your requests.
Your device will also send Apple other information, such as your first name and nickname; the names, nicknames, and relationship with you (e.g., my dad) of your address book contacts; and song names in your collection (collectively, your User Data). All of this data is used to help Siri understand you better and recognize what you say. It is not linked to other data that Apple may have from your use of other Apple services.
By using Siri, you agree and consent to Apples and its subsidiaries and agents transmission, collection, maintenance, processing, and use of this information, including your voice input and User Data, to provide and improve Siri and other Apple products and services.
If you have Location Services turned on, the location of your iOS Device at the time you make a request will also be sent to Apple to help Siri improve the accuracy of its response to your location-based requests. You may disable the location-based functionality of Siri by going to the Location Services setting on your iOS Device and turning off the individual location setting for Siri.
You can also turn off Siri altogether at any time. To do so, open Settings, tap General, tap Siri, and slide the Siri switch to off. You may also restrict the ability to use Siri under the Restrictions Setting."
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Takeaways:
With Siri, Apple becomes the middleman for searches and can collect what those are and possibly your location, in order to add more value to their own advertising in other apps.
To Wolfram and Google, it's probably just an anonymous request from Apple, which shifts power from the search engines to Cupertino.
It's a bit surprising that Apple says they won't tie the search requests to other info they know about the user (from iTunes, etc). That would've been both expected and increased their ad value. It would've also made Siri seem more intelligent as it would know more about the user's preferences.
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The SLA states that the voice recording and all your contacts' names are sent to Apple for processing.
First, what will be the impact on people's data plans?
Second, how does it affect people with huge contact lists? Are they compressed and sent every time? Does Apple cache any of this for closely spaced requests?
Third, the SLA isn't quite accurate about sending our "recorded" voice if we are to believe the reports that the Siri team claims it can only run on a 4S because of the need to devote a core to "Fourier comb and Markov filter" processing. (Respectively, those would be for separating frequencies and parsing speech sections, resulting in smaller data chunks.) It sounds like they're sending far less info that way and having to do far less processing on the server side. Which is A Good Thing, bandwidth wise.
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All in all, no big reveals except that contact info is also sent up instead of having the phone itself match up names once a request is parsed and sent back.
For example, the iPhone 4S SLA has a new section. Underlining is mine:
-----------------------------------------------------
"Siri. If your iOS Device supports Siri, which includes the dictation feature, these features allow you to make requests, give commands and dictate text to your device using your voice.
When you use Siri, the things you say will be recorded and sent to Apple to process your requests.
Your device will also send Apple other information, such as your first name and nickname; the names, nicknames, and relationship with you (e.g., my dad) of your address book contacts; and song names in your collection (collectively, your User Data). All of this data is used to help Siri understand you better and recognize what you say. It is not linked to other data that Apple may have from your use of other Apple services.
By using Siri, you agree and consent to Apples and its subsidiaries and agents transmission, collection, maintenance, processing, and use of this information, including your voice input and User Data, to provide and improve Siri and other Apple products and services.
If you have Location Services turned on, the location of your iOS Device at the time you make a request will also be sent to Apple to help Siri improve the accuracy of its response to your location-based requests. You may disable the location-based functionality of Siri by going to the Location Services setting on your iOS Device and turning off the individual location setting for Siri.
You can also turn off Siri altogether at any time. To do so, open Settings, tap General, tap Siri, and slide the Siri switch to off. You may also restrict the ability to use Siri under the Restrictions Setting."
-----------------------------------------------------
Takeaways:
With Siri, Apple becomes the middleman for searches and can collect what those are and possibly your location, in order to add more value to their own advertising in other apps.
To Wolfram and Google, it's probably just an anonymous request from Apple, which shifts power from the search engines to Cupertino.
It's a bit surprising that Apple says they won't tie the search requests to other info they know about the user (from iTunes, etc). That would've been both expected and increased their ad value. It would've also made Siri seem more intelligent as it would know more about the user's preferences.
--
The SLA states that the voice recording and all your contacts' names are sent to Apple for processing.
First, what will be the impact on people's data plans?
Second, how does it affect people with huge contact lists? Are they compressed and sent every time? Does Apple cache any of this for closely spaced requests?
Third, the SLA isn't quite accurate about sending our "recorded" voice if we are to believe the reports that the Siri team claims it can only run on a 4S because of the need to devote a core to "Fourier comb and Markov filter" processing. (Respectively, those would be for separating frequencies and parsing speech sections, resulting in smaller data chunks.) It sounds like they're sending far less info that way and having to do far less processing on the server side. Which is A Good Thing, bandwidth wise.
--
All in all, no big reveals except that contact info is also sent up instead of having the phone itself match up names once a request is parsed and sent back.