When Siri Listens: DiPLab’s Thomas Le Bonniec interviewed on Radio France Culture

France Culture’s show Les Pieds sur Terre has devoted a recent episode to what has come to be known as the Siri scandal—the discovery that Apple’s voice assistant recorded private conversations without users’ knowledge. The episode, titled “Hey Siri, are you recording me?” [Dis Siri, est-ce que tu m’enregistres ?, in French], available for replay, features prominently the first-person account of DiPLab’s Thomas Le Bonniec, who partook in this system as part of the large workforce tasked with listening to and annotating Siri recordings.

A PhD candidate at the Institut Polytechnique de Paris, Le Bonniec relates his experience which echoes that of hundreds of workers hired to sift through thousands of audio snippets, often recorded unintentionally: medical information, intimate details, sensitive data, and countless fragments of daily life. This role of data worker is often precarious, outsourced, and hidden. This occupation aligns with that of millions of AI trainers, click workers, and content moderators whose labor quietly powers today’s artificial intelligence systems. Their work sheds light on how AI systems rely on vast amounts of human-powered tasks, often carried out under poor working conditions and with limited recognition.

Le Bonniec’s testimony contributes to a growing body of evidence emphasizing that behind every “automated” system stands a global labor force ensuring that AI functions as intended.