Siri was the target of a privacy-based lawsuit
Apple has agreed to pay $95 million to settle a proposed class action lawsuit, accusing the company of violating user privacy due to recording conversations after accidentally activating Siri.
The preliminary settlement, filed in an Oakland, California federal court on Tuesday, sees Apple proposing a payment of $95 million to the class to end the 2019 lawsuit.
The class consists of customers who used Siri-enabled Apple products from September 17, 2014 to December 31, 2024. With tens of millions of potential class members, each may receive up to $20 per Siri-enabled device.
This would include the iPhone and iPad, as well as Mac hardware, the Apple Watch, and HomePod.
However, the figure could be a lot less, as usual for a class-action lawsuit. Reuters reports lawyers for the plaintiffs can seek up to $28.5 million in fees and $1.1 million for expenses, charged to the fund.
The settlement still requires approval from U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White before it can be paid out.
Despite agreeing to pay, Apple still denied any wrongdoing in its settlement. Apple did not formally respond to the publication’s request for comment.
Hey Siri recordings
The lawsuit claimed Apple had unlawfully recorded conversations without permission, via the use of Siri.
Some plaintiffs claimed that discussions of products such as Air Jordan and Olive Garden restaurants prompted ads to be served for those products. However, Apple’s privacy systems would prevent such targeted advertising to occur based on recordings from Siri specifically.
The suit surfaced following reports that human contractors were used to review private or sensitive recordings in a quality assurance program, intended to improve Siri’s accuracy.
A small number of recordings were passed on to the contractors, working for a third-party firm, the report at the time claimed. The team were tasked with working out whether a particular Siri activation was accidental or performed on purpose, determining if the query was within Siri’s capabilities, and if Siri’s response was proper.
While the report claimed Apple didn’t explicitly disclose at the time that recordings were passed to contractors, Apple did tell users some queries were manually reviewed. In fact it had given that notice since the start of Siri’s public availability.
The first instance of the lawsuit actually confirmed that Apple informed users about the sharing of voice samples for quality control purposes.
The practice of manual review of digital assistant recordings was not just performed by Apple, as Amazon and Google were found to use similar programs.
Following the reports, Apple suspended the program while it reviewed the possibility of Siri recording users accidentally. It later became an opt-in program, with Apple also making it easier for users to delete recordings.
The initial version of the lawsuit was tossed in 2021, with Judge White determining the plaintiffs had failed to provide sufficient facts to support the lawsuit’s claims. The first version of the lawsuit accused Apple of violating a variety of state and federal laws, including a federal statute of wiretapping.
While it was a brief win for Apple at the time, Judge White gave the lawyers and consumers permission to revise and review their complaint, for a second filing. That resulted in the now-settled lawsuit.
Though Apple is settling its lawsuit on the topic, the same lawyers are handling a similar complaint via the San Jose, California federal court, against Google.
