The article doesn't really misrepresent anything... Apple is indeed walking back their promise, and their doing it the T&Cs nobody reads, while doing "opt in" by forcing users to make a choice on this based on deceptive doublespeak.

Which means eventually its going to "accidentally" be opt out as a bug feature.

Just never use Siri. It's been available how long? I've always shut it off from the get-go. Also, I do not use my Apple ID to log in my computers.

Always use a local password for the hardware and just avoid the cloud like the plague.

FFS, I don't even keep my music libraries in the default location, since all sorts of holy hell seems to arise (on my ancent systems anyhow) when I do.

This is like all things Apple - you just avoid the new shit, and step away from updating the OS until the first or second update drops because the first adopters are ALWAYS the actual beta testers.

Been that way since MacOS 7.

Hmm, i missed that Part. On second read it’s only opt in. I still thought they would do better, especially since they said all of their AI features would be privacy focused