On the heels of a feature story in Wired last week, Apple executives and engineers opened up about how Siri works in interviews with Fast Company. As the publication explained it, a narrative has emerged that Apple’s AI work is behind other companies’ efforts because of its dedication to user privacy.

In an interview with Fast Company, Apple’s Greg Joswiak disagrees:

“I think it is a false narrative. It’s true that we like to keep the data as optimized as possible, that’s certainly something that I think a lot of users have come to expect, and they know that we’re treating their privacy maybe different than some others are.”

Joswiak argues that Siri can be every bit as helpful as other assistants without accumulating a lot of personal user data in the cloud, as companies like Facebook and Google are accustomed to doing. “We’re able to deliver a very personalized experience … without treating you as a product that keeps your information and sells it to the highest bidder. That’s just not the way we operate.”

The article provides concrete examples of how Siri works and the advances that have been made since it was introduced with a level of detail that has not been shared before.

The effectiveness of Siri and Apple’s machine learning research is an area where Apple’s culture of secrecy has hurt it. Apple seems to have recognized this and has made a concerted effort to turn perceptions around with interviews like the ones in Wired and Fast Company. Apple employees have also begun to engage in more public discussion of the company’s machine learning and AI initiatives through outlets like its recently-introduced journal and presentations made by Apple employees. Apple even enlisted The Rock to help it get the word out about Siri’s capabilities. Competition for virtual personal assistant supremacy has heated up, and Apple has signaled it has no intention of being left out or backing down.

David Pierce has a feature story on WIRED today that’s all about Siri – especially the new Siri voice coming in iOS 11. It features a variety of interesting details concerning Siri’s history, the way Apple thinks about the digital assistant, and in-depth details on how new Siri languages are added.

One of my favorite bits involves a quote from Apple’s VP of product marketing, Greg Jozwiak, who said Apple focuses on Siri’s ability to get things done:

It drives him crazy that people compare virtual assistants by asking trivia questions, which always makes Siri look bad. “We didn’t engineer this thing to be Trivial Pursuit!” he says.

This explains Siri’s productivity-focused commercial starring The Rock, and also helps make sense of the fact that Siri is often embarrassingly clueless when it comes to current events or other simple queries. Though Apple’s awareness of the problem exacerbates its lack of a suitable response in beefing up Siri’s trivia knowledge.

Other interesting tidbits from the story include the fact that Siri now has a massive 375 million active monthly users, and that Siri’s new, more natural voice was inspired in part by the movie Her.