Apple’s privacy policy for its Apple Store app reveals plans for a built-in AI-powered virtual shopping assistant, and it’s not Siri.
The updated policy describes a chat interface that will let customers ask questions about Apple products, drawing on account information, device identifiers, chat history, carrier information, and, where enabled, location data to shape a personalised response.
That level of data collection points to a system built for back-and-forth conversation rather than a simple search bar bolted onto the existing app, and Apple plans to save chat transcripts so customers can pick up the same conversation when they return to the app later.
Those transcripts also feed Apple’s own business analytics, and customers who opt in allow the same data to help improve the assistant over time, a structure similar to how other companies refine conversational AI tools through real usage.
The most telling detail is how Apple handles the data once a chat begins: it scrubs personal identifiers before sharing chat content with partners it has not named, and the admission that those partners help generate responses suggests Apple may be using a third-party AI model rather than building the system in-house.
That would mark a shift from Apple’s usual approach of keeping AI processing on-device or within its own infrastructure wherever possible, particularly for anything tied to a customer’s purchase history and account details.
A similar pattern played out earlier this year when Apple quietly added a virtual assistant to its separate Apple Support app, a feature that still has not reached every user months after it first appeared.
The virtual shopping assistant has not gone live inside the Apple Store app either, and the detail in the privacy policy suggests Apple could already be testing the feature with a limited group of users, with wider availability likely to follow only once internal testing runs its course.
Apple has not confirmed a release date for the Apple Store app assistant, so customers will only learn more once Apple makes an official announcement or the feature turns up more widely inside the app itself.
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